Fury and Dread

The corpse was still fresh when the warband found it, near a fishing village on the banks of the Titanflow. It was a local boy, no older than fourteen. His body was now mangled and torn, with a huge half-moon section missing from his torso below the right arm, and a smaller one on his neck, as if the mouth that fed on him was too hungry to be picky between organs, flesh, and bones. The flesh was brittle on the wounds’ borders, as if scorched, and a bitter smell mingled with the coppery scent of the blood. The struggle between hunter and prey had turned the ground into a small mire of bloody mud. The scene bore such familiarity that Nar’Tak couldn’t repress a faint longing for home.

A knight of the takras was crouched beside the body, examining it, searching for clues as to what had happened. His golden armor covered in intricate designs of primordial clay, he had been chosen to perform the task so as not to create any more animosity between the members of the Anga Kith and the Rite of the Intemerate. Each group had joined Nar’Tak’s warband, despite their many differences, for her call to hunt down and destroy corrupt magic spoke to them all. Both parties watched the knight attentively. Nar’Tak approached the man, peering at the scene through her Legacy, a mask known as Guise of the Videre, that had gained her the trust of the Intemerate, despite her upbringing. The knight flinched at her presence, caught off-guard by her nimble steps, but quickly composed himself.

“My Seeker,” the Knight began, “the damage inflicted does not appear to match any of the creatures that inhabit these lands.”

Of course it doesn’t, Nar’Tak thought, repressing the urge to berate the knight for stating the obvious. Auric had taught her to control her temper, but it had never been truly domesticated.

“What is it, then, Adrian?” Nar’Tak’s voice slipped through the Guise with small wheezes and some hissed syllables. Her Legacy hid the damage to her lips and face, but her voice betrayed the scarring hidden beneath.

“It matches some of the mons—” Adrian paused for a second and then corrected himself, “creatures of Paxos, my Seeker. Perhaps a cuca. It would explain both the nature of the wounds and the size of the tracks.”

Nar’Tak had considered the same idea at first, but there were too many pieces that didn’t fit. “A cuca would have dragged the body into the water, and there’s no cuca outside the Triumvir.” She explained. “I could see one finding its way into the Quicksilver, but the Titanflow is too far from its hunting grounds. Besides, the body is quite a distance from the river banks. Cucas strike from the water, taking their victims by surprise. “There’s something else at work here.”

Nar’Tak lowered her body closer to the ground, feeling no need to keep herself clean of the blood. She brought her face close to the corpse, mere inches away from the mask, first studying its eyes, and then the torso wound. She sniffed for a moment, then stopped. With her right hand, she removed her Legacy. Then, wetting the fingertips of her left hand with the blood, she brought them to her lips and tasted it. Adrian turned away, and for a moment, Nar’Tak wondered whether his disgust was born from her act, or from her face. The Seeker rose, spitting the blood from her mouth and covering her face with the Guise once again.

“Has anyone actually seen the creature? Anyone who survived, that is.” Nar’Tak asked the knight.

“Yes, my Seeker. The witness has been summoned,” Adrian said, pointing to a small cabin about a hundred feet from the river. It was on the outskirts of a small, nameless fishing village, with little more than a dozen or so houses. The doors and windows of those houses were tightly shut now, but Nar’Tak could still sense the frightened eyes of the villagers focused on her through whatever openings remained. This was the lawless frontier, which Nar’Tak assumed was the point for many of them. Many would be escaped convicts from the sovereign cities, or fools who thought they could strike it rich out here. The first group feared the knights of the order and their propensity to dispense unrequited justice, while the second would fear the Kith folk, for too many reasons to count. They all feared her as much as they did whatever monster had taken the boy. As she looked on, a group of the Intemerate knights came from behind the cabin, not-so-gently directing a man to walk towards the Seeker.

Albus, a striga hunter, held the ragged-clothed man. Next to him walked a massive, fully clad knight, resting her warhammer on her shoulder, her right hand still on the handle. She was Helena, the strongest member of Nar’Tak’s warband after herself, and the purity of her actions had eased the hearts of those members of the Order who had chosen to follow a “barbarian” into battle.

The fisherman pressed his hands to his sunburnt face, the calluses signalling a life of hard work as the muffled cries denounced a sorrowful heart. As they approached, Nar’Tak overheard from the hunter the last words of a conversation: “…had you any faith, the Everlasting would have spared your child. You called this woe unto yourself.” Nar’Tak felt the judgment like a personal blow. She thought of asking the hunter if it had been lack of faith that had seen her own Kith dead, but thought better of it. Better to cling to the fragile peace. 

Nar’Tak approached the man, then turned to the fisherman:

“Tell her what you’ve seen, faithless.”

“It was the Mapinguari,” he sobbed, “it lured my poor Danil out of the cabin. We should have never come here. Why did we leave Jenefin? They warned us. They said that people came out here to die. I thought them cowards! And look at what it brought me!”

Nar’Tak recognized the name. Her mother used to weave tales of such creatures,  on starless nights, when the campfire grew dim, and the spirits were free to roam the cold forests. Mapinguari meant “starving maw” in the old Oerikan tongue. Any evil Oerikan who had grown too gluttonous and dared wish for more than the bounty the All-Mother freely offered. Such people were cursed with an endless hunger, one so great that they would slice open their own bellies so that they could shove food directly into their stomachs. In time, the wound grew teeth, but the hunger remained. 

“Explain from the start. You said it lured him out of the cabin?” Nar’Tak said in as reassuring a tone as she could muster. 

“Yes, I… I said that? No, apologies. It was a monster, a beast, nothing more.” The man answered, seeming confused. It could be the trauma, Nar’Tak thought, or it could be something else.

“Did you get a good look at it?” Nar’Tak pushed on.

“When I came out of the cabin, looking for my boy, I saw it. I couldn’t move. It was as if my blood had frozen in my veins. I saw it, but I couldn’t bear to watch what it was doing with my boy, so I… I looked away. Oh, what a coward I am!” The man closed his eyes now, tears rolling down his face.

“Keep going. What did the creature look like?” Nar’Tak urged him.

“It had no face, just grotesque limbs and an enormous mouth in its belly. I heard it breaking Danil’s bones! I heard my boy’s body thump to the ground, discarded as if he was nothing but trash!” The fisherman said, bloodshot eyes staring through Nar’Tak’s soul. “That’s when I opened my eyes again and screamed. It must have been scared away by the noise and—”

“Are you sure of this? It dropped him before it saw you?” Nar’Tak thought to herself that it was wholly strange for a beast of Paxos, mythical or not, to abandon a meal before it was finished with it. There may be something in this. 

“I… No, no. It must have dropped him when I screamed. I must have startled it. Yes, I must have.” As the man answered, Nar’Tak saw confusion in his eyes again. It was almost like the memories were forming before her eyes. The man seemed distressed now, as if her prodding him for answers was causing him much discomfort. The fisherman wheezed, gasping for air, and took a few moments for his senses to return before continuing.

“By the Everlasting, it looked at me! It looked at me and smiled!” The man stopped, letting out a desperate sob that almost choked the life out of him.

“I thought you said it didn’t have a face? It looked at you? How?” As Nar’Tak pressed on, the man seemed to become even more agitated, starting to babble incoherent nonsense. “It was a monster, a beast, it took my boy.” He kept repeating.

Whatever they were hunting, the signs did not point to the magic of the Primal Blood.

“Call your scenthound, Albus.” Nar’Tak said, turning to the hunter. He lifted his helmet just enough to reach his lips with his fingers, emitting a high-pitched whistle. Soon, a dog rushed out of the nearby woods, wearing a golden blinder, its neck protected by a spiked collar.

Nar’Tak drew her blade and crouched in front of the dog. With a small incision, she drew blood from her own hand and gave it to the beast to smell. The hound snapped to attention, taking the scent in, then it lifted its head to the sky, as if recalling something. Suddenly, it became agitated and burst away from the group. It moved to the body of Danil, stopped for a moment to sniff, and then moved on quickly into the woods, every so often calling for its master to follow with loud barks. The heavy helmet wasn’t enough to hide Helena”s confusion.

“What is it that the dog smelled, my Seeker?”

“Liastrum,” Nar’Tak answered.

Some years ago, Jonru would have felt a sting of shame at calling the place a laboratory, but shame, much like research ethics, had long since been abandoned alongside his humanity in favor of true progress. The laboratory was once the pride of Sphere Chimer, a scientific outpost that, for a small fee, was open to any master willing to experiment with the Titanflow and the nearby fauna. For years now, vermin and dust had claimed it, and Jonru hadn’t devoted much effort to changing that. 

The laboratory’s stench was overwhelming. Corpses, or at least parts of them, littered the place in many open jars and towering glass tubes, filled with a wide array of preservers, reagents, and flavor enhancers. One could spend an entire day cataloguing every specimen Jonru had in his inventory, and many more still were beyond any possibility of analysis, given the usual bite marks.

The apparatus that filled the small complex were meant to be installed as quickly as possible, and even more quickly brought down to destroy any evidence, should the need arise. If possible, Jonru would rather perform his experiments in the open, as close as possible to the materials he required, but exposure, wild animals, and experimental overloads would risk the safety of his apprentices, and far from Quinvala as he was, they were his most important asset.

Two knocks on the door announced the entry of one such apprentice. 

“Master, it is I, Niko.” The boy said before entering the laboratory. He wore traditional Conclave apprentice garb and held in his hands a simple wooden trap, in which a Shrieker struggled and screamed. “The hunt was successful.”

“Good. Very good. Now, give it to me,” Jonru said. The grotesque mouth on his shoulder repeated the phrase in a low-pitched voice, and with a small delay. Approaching the boy with loud thuds from his massive body and raising two skinnier arms attached to his Legacy, the Malwat Cauldron in his torso, Jonru grabbed the trap and began playing with it like a puzzle box, studying the reactions of the creature trapped within. 

Closer to his apprentice, Jonru could better analyze the scent that seeped from the boy’s body, recognizing a mix of cold sweat, bitter herbs, and diluted Liastrum. It was different from the typical smell of Liastrum that emanated from a mage of the Conclave, however. The substance had been diluted, applied to his clothes, and a thin layer of it coated his skin from head to toe. Niko wasn’t the only one engaging in the practice, and for some time, Jonru had been able to smell it on several of his apprentices. The Seeker knew that they were trying to make themselves as unpleasant to the palate as possible. 

“I hope you’re aware of the damage that direct exposure to Liastrum causes to flesh.” Jonru spoke as the Shrieker, now held in one of his hands, bit hard into a finger. Years ago, before his ascension, the Shrieker would have ripped the finger clean off. Now, he barely felt any pain.

“Yes, Master. It is par—” Niko was interrupted by a loud crack as Jonru broke the Shrieker’s spine. The struggle was over. “Part of an experiment.”

“Of course it is.” Jonru spoke as the fangs around the rim of the Cauldron locked the Shrieker’s body in to be consumed. “What about the materials from Veloma? Have you established trade for the components?”

“Not completely, my Master, but we made progress with a group of Sybil corpse dealers. They promised us a cartload of fresh components within three months. Something about a great public execution. They are… difficult to deal with, as I’m sure you’re aware, Master.” 

Jonru let out a guttural, wet sigh, produced by all of his mouths at once. His merging with the Malwat Cauldron had awakened incredible powers within him, and the Anush-Vah of the Legion of the Fallen now answered to his command much like the Liastrum in his orbs. Given the proper materials, he could raise creatures that would make a fleshgrafter shudder. Still, the merger had imposed a grim cost. His appetite was infinite, and the same bodies he needed to raise servants more often than not ended up being devoured by the Cauldron, simply to sustain him. Feeding brought him an ecstatic pleasure that his once human self could not have dreamed of, but the hunger that preceded it had both rendered him more monstrous and dulled his genius.

“There’s something else, Master. A hunter of the Order has been stalking our scouts. A woman. The rest of us are getting nervous. She’s tried to hide her presence, but something about her feels strange. She reeks of Liastrum.”

Jonru stood silent for a moment, but before he could utter the first word, the mouth on his left shoulder denounced his intentions: “Fresh meat,” it said, as huge drops of drool fell to the ground with wet splashes. Jonru smiled. He was hungry, and it had been a few days since he last ate sentient flesh. The faithful little lambs of the Order, especially, had a particularly robust flavor. Surely, the hunter was tainted meat if she was poisoned by Liastrum, but those who followed her would make for quite a menu.

More importantly, Jonru’s warband had been thinned by previous expeditions into the Malediction, and besides a handful of apprentices and a few Thaumites who would lend their services, he was short on Spellbound and horrors, and lacked the reserves for creating more.

“It seems our time at this laboratory comes to a close, apprentice.” Jonru said, the sound of his words echoing through the Malwat Cauldron. “Fate has delivered us a cost-effective way of gathering the materials we need.”

“But Master, we already est—”

“Gather the collectors and make ready for an assault. I’ll find their encampment myself”. 

“What about the hunter?” Niko said, head hung low, already dreading the hours to come.

“Give her something to chase.” 

Jonru knew the importance of the bodies he would claim for his research, but hunger had already begun to take over his mind. “Tonight I feast.”

She had departed three days before to pursue the Mapinguari, taking with her just a few hunters, as the knights were too slow and heavily armored to keep pace or stalk silently. Those who stayed behind were to set up camp near the fishermen’s village, and protect them should the creature strike again.

She had expected the Mapinguari to be a Spellbound, a creature of the Conclave that had escaped its confinement, and many of the creatures she found after her hunt started were just that. A lonely abyssal hybrid, a watchful gargoyle up above, and even a monstrous mangler whose strike had sent a hunter flying. All were brought down in a flurry of blades as Nar’Tak’s blood boiled. For all the work they had done, they seemed no closer to their quarry.

Nar’Tak would never tire of hunting the mages and their wicked creations, but her companions needed to rest. Beyond this, she couldn’t shake off the dread that clawed at her heart. Ever since she had seen the body at the village and talked with his father, something had been bothering her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Liastrum poisoning could have explained the fisherman’s skewed memory, and the spellbound were often suffused with the cursed substance, but in retrospect… It could have been a spell, one disguised to look like simple contamination. Each of the Spellbound she had been tracking seemed to lead her farther and farther from her camp, and none were a match for the bite marks on Danil’s corpse. The feeling Nar’Tak couldn’t shake was that she was the one being hunted, or worse, toyed with. Even though they were fatigued, her group made good time when returning to the camp, the Guise of the Videre letting Nar’Tak’s sense of urgency flow to her companions alongside some of her power. They were about a half-hour trek away from the village when they saw the smoke in the sky. In a frantic rush, she covered that distance in a third of the time.

What remained of the camp was now alight with blue flames, confirming Nar’Tak’s worst fears. The place had clearly been attacked by Conclave mages. It was hard to make out anything through the clouds of billowing smoke. As Nar’Tak approached, those flames were extinguished, little by little, and some silhouettes came into focus. Amidst the carnage of the ruined camp, a few knights and berserkers stood tall in triumph, while others lay face-down in the dirt, with torn limbs and scorched flesh. Helena stood the tallest, with half a dozen bodies at her feet. She clung to her warhammer, letting the weight of her body rest on the weapon as she drew deep breaths. The doors to the villagers’ cabins had been stoved in, and trails of blood led away into the woods. 

The ground was littered with corpses from both sides, and the blood that flowed from man and abomination drenched the ground just the same. 

“Who did this?” Nar’Tak said. She approached Helena as every gaze in the ruined encampment turned to her in judgment. “Your Mapinguari…,” Helena answered, her words carrying a hint of disdain. “A perversion of all that is holy. A horror touched by the heresy of both Liastrum and Anush-Vah.” Helena lowered her head and let it rest on the warhammer’s handle. “A Master of the Conclave.”

An Anga ravager struggling to contain his frenzy approached Nar’Tak. Much like the Seeker, his face was hidden beneath a mask, but while hers carried the power and majesty of a Legacy, his was a symbol of torment: the gruesome visage of a horned creature, its thick, blunt teeth in an ugly smile.

“We have a trail. We give chase. Now.” He spoke.

“No. We won’t. Not before we tend to the wounded, assess the damage, and come up with a plan.” Nar’Tak answered, knowing the dangers of denying a berserker his blood due.

“You dare hide in cowardice?!” 

“Blood of my blood, we are both stones of the same Takra. If we go now, we die, and our spirits shall rejoin Ymiris and the Oathbound Light in shame. It takes strength to conquer our own pain. We both know this well.” Nar’Tak said, humbly touching her mask and then the ravager’s. “But never again dare to call me a coward.”

The ravager stood in silence for a while, then nodded.

Nar’Tak’s eyes moved between each of the survivors, their painful expressions awaiting her command.

“Today we have been fooled and bested, but our enemy has made a fatal error. He has toyed with us, like a cat with his prey, and then he left us alive. Tonight, we lick our wounds… Tomorrow we do what we were born to do, the thing that has bound us together: We hunt.” Nar’Tak said. 

Helena took a deep breath and raised her head after a few moments of deep thought. “It is the will of the Rite of the Intemerate to see the creature dead. For vengeance, for the light of our Order, and for the greater good of Selejia. You have us, for now.”

Around Nar’Tak, the berserkers of the Anga Kith watched with rageful eyes, their sleepless, swollen eyes darker than usual beneath their masks. “The warriors of the Anga Kith thirst for the blood of our prey.”

This wasn’t Jonru’s first venture into the Malediction, but he still couldn’t bring himself to blame his apprentices for their horror when facing the truth of the accursed lands. It had been nearly three months since his successful attack on the Order encampment, and nearly every step since acquiring that meal had been seamless and opportune. He had leveraged the bodies he had obtained from both the villagers and the soldiers into both sustenance and resources for the creation of horrors and Spellbound. Then, he had moved on to the next village and done the same. Merchant caravans, Kiths of the Primal Blood, all who had the misfortune of crossing his path over the past three months had been added to his forces or his larder. His apprentices had grown confident in that time, finding their Master satiated and victories flowing easily. Now, as they crossed into the Malediction, their confidence was shattered. The ground beneath their feet became a gigantic trail of white, dead soil, painted red with blood and stretching impossibly far ahead of them into the depths of the Malediction. 

“Master, I don’t understand. We diligently followed the moon-prophecies we bought from the Sybil. They should have guided us true.” Niko said. The warband was a few dozen feet away from the trail, afraid of the dead ground ahead of them. Jonru didn’t share their fear and shuffled towards it.

“It was to be expected, apprentice. The truth of their prophecies hides even from them, and it can seldom survive the mutability of the Malediction. We have arrived at the right place, just not at the right time. We are late.” Jonru answered, and the mouths murmured in a delayed chorus: “We are late.”

“Pardon my ignorance, Master, but if we are at the right place, then where is it? Is it in the past?”

Jonru laughed. Not cruel or dismissive, but in genuine amusement. Should one speak to any other mind in Selejia about reaching for the far past, they would scoff, but those of the Conclave were prone to considering the impossible, as time was just another field of study to be mastered.

“Don’t bother yourself with these questions for now, Niko. Trust me.” Jonru said. “We have found the trail, which isn’t perfect, but it will be enough.”  

Jonru turned to his warband, equal parts apprentices, thaumites, Spellbound of the Conclave, and horrors of the Legion, either built by his own hands or stolen from Epitaph.

“My greatest prize lies at the end of this path.” He said, pointing at the distance, where the trail disappeared beneath the horizon. “It has the power to bring about marvelous things for our Conclave and, more importantly, for ourselves. I know that the past few months have been far from ideal, but let me once more assure you all that, at this journey’s end, it will be within my power to reward you all handsomely. My dear apprentices, should you survive the trials to come, the title of Master is guaranteed for each and every one of you.”

Behind him, his speech fell on the few sentient minds that composed his warband. They were wounded and battered by the travel, and many had held on to the hope that they were about to meet their goal. The offer of one more path to follow, of a myriad of dangers to face, seemed like nothing but a bitter promise of death. Jonru knew that. Rallying cries and grand speeches of loyalty and faith in a higher purpose had never been Chimer’s specialty, and Jonru’s words came out crude and awkward. But he cared not. He needed only to keep the flame of their ambitions stoked for long enough for him to reach his prize.

With a command, the gargoyles flew ahead and disappeared into the distance, scouting the trail ahead, and the warband moved.

“My next meal shall be grand,” Jonru said, and the Malwat Cauldron drooled.

It had been three months since her folly at the shores of the Titanflow, a loss so bitter that its taste still lingered in Nar’Tak’s mouth. But now, things were different. She now knew her prey wasn’t a mere beast, and a lifetime of war against the Conclave had taught her how to evade their trickery, even when combined with the Anush-Vah. 

After a formal request sent by Helena, Nar’Tak’s warband had covertly received reinforcements from the Rite of the Intemerate, and word of Anga’s defeat at the hands of Jonru saw several berserkers joining the Seeker to clear the Kith’s honor.

As soon as reinforcements had arrived, a knight privately handed Helena a letter, which she read silently and promptly destroyed. It was a simple letter, but bore the distinct seal of a Septa for those with the eyes to recognize it, and the manner in which it was handed said much about its nature. Powerful as she was, Nar’Tak was still a barbarian in the Order’s eyes. For her to receive direct orders, worse still, reinforcements, was an act of heresy that could compromise the Rite, so Helena would have to be the bridge between them.

That was three days earlier, before they crossed the Beast Gate, into the Malediction. Now, in the sky above them, clouds twisted and bled like tumors, and holes in the fabric of reality came in and out of existence as they were torn and sewn back together by unknown hands. Even after days of walking, the shadowy presence of the Wall of Galdrun still lingered at a distance behind her. 

“The Septas have reason to believe our prey seeks the body of an Everlasting.” Helena spoke to Nar’Tak as they reached a small hillside of purplish sand. The warband was a few feet behind them. “His name is Jonru.”

“He will die before long. I care naught for his name.” Nar’Tak answered.

Helena nodded. “May the pure light of the Triumvirate guide our blades…”

“… into the hearts of the impure,” Nar’Tak completed.