They left the ruins in ruin with not a soul to attend to what remained. Axe and fist and spell tore at the evil things that had risen bidden but unbidden, curiosities summoned by hubris and made monstrous by blood. Ten children laid slaughtered on their side alone: ten bodies, Steel Wolf swore, that would be given rest somehow.
They departed the place unsettled and beaten. They were too late to save anyone. Zarek, the young man with sharp eyes and an eager grin, walked away with his fists clenched. Mistalv was as stoic as one might expect a Fist to be: a stone standing solid in a current of tragedy. Vengeance would come to them sure and swift, even if it would have to be saved for another day.
And then there was Delial.
They did not move without reason and did not risk exposure when it could be helped. Windsoul had found them somehow but he did not know what it was he had interrupted. Even when he fled the first den, leaving the writhing, howling, hungry mass behind him, he did not understand. But how many, Delial wondered, knew their work? How many could have felt the weight of the amulets he had pilfered and known that they were heavy beyond what could be held? They stunk of poisoned aether, and their very presence made her itch just beneath her skin. They were familiar to her and they did not ask how.
While they returned to their lives disquieted and forlorn, Delial waited. Three suns and four nights passed without so much as a peiste drifting by, but on the fourth sun her patience was rewarded. A figure came, alone at first but soon to be joined by two more, gaunt and clad in dark robes. They moved quickly, silently, disquieted in their own way. Their blasphemies were a matter of course, as vital as the need for food and water; their failures, however, were not, especially not to such a catastrophic scale.
The stones wore streaks of blood and ichor and there was little enough, flesh or otherwise, to be recovered. They marched melancholy, muttering at how the very vines that draped the high walls seemed to twitch when they were not looking. In one chamber they toed around the crushed remains of black, chitinous things that bristled with wings and talons. As they passed and as she passed after them, she knelt and peeled what she supposed must have once been a scythe-clawed limb of one such creature off the floor. It was light in her hands and she ignored the soft buzz that dug into her nerves where ever her skin touched its surface. It was in the following chamber, the round chamber littered with scraps of torn cloth and aether-scorched bone that was surely their destination, that she drew near enough to listen closely.
"How could this be? They had all the resources they could have needed."
"We cannot stand for this. We risked too much."
"The glyphs were perfect. They had to have been. Checked a dozen times at least."
"Sabotage? Do you think this was sabotage?"
Three hooded heads turned and gauged one another, tense and disbelieving. Then something whispered and went crack! and three then found itself short one, which had somehow ended up rolling upon the ground, trailing a heavy dribble of crimson.
Delial very nearly took another before they turned and saw her stepping forward. That head crunched sickly instead as the stiff blackened claws dug and tore through the side of its skull, sending the rest of its body falling bonelessly to join its fallen comrade. She did not bother to retrieve her makeshift weapon. The one that remained stared, raising its - no, his hands as though he intended to fight back. He would have a knife upon his person, she knew, but he hesitated for far, far too long. Her hands met his chest and she pushed outwards with raw aether, blasting the wind from his lungs and his feet off the ground. His body tumbled to a halt little more than a yalm away but before he could rise, his chest was met with a none-too-gentle boot that pinned him down hard. Delial relented only when she felt cleats scrape bone, locking her gaze to wide, young eyes.
"Now," she said, "I think we ought have some words."
They departed the place unsettled and beaten. They were too late to save anyone. Zarek, the young man with sharp eyes and an eager grin, walked away with his fists clenched. Mistalv was as stoic as one might expect a Fist to be: a stone standing solid in a current of tragedy. Vengeance would come to them sure and swift, even if it would have to be saved for another day.
And then there was Delial.
They did not move without reason and did not risk exposure when it could be helped. Windsoul had found them somehow but he did not know what it was he had interrupted. Even when he fled the first den, leaving the writhing, howling, hungry mass behind him, he did not understand. But how many, Delial wondered, knew their work? How many could have felt the weight of the amulets he had pilfered and known that they were heavy beyond what could be held? They stunk of poisoned aether, and their very presence made her itch just beneath her skin. They were familiar to her and they did not ask how.
While they returned to their lives disquieted and forlorn, Delial waited. Three suns and four nights passed without so much as a peiste drifting by, but on the fourth sun her patience was rewarded. A figure came, alone at first but soon to be joined by two more, gaunt and clad in dark robes. They moved quickly, silently, disquieted in their own way. Their blasphemies were a matter of course, as vital as the need for food and water; their failures, however, were not, especially not to such a catastrophic scale.
The stones wore streaks of blood and ichor and there was little enough, flesh or otherwise, to be recovered. They marched melancholy, muttering at how the very vines that draped the high walls seemed to twitch when they were not looking. In one chamber they toed around the crushed remains of black, chitinous things that bristled with wings and talons. As they passed and as she passed after them, she knelt and peeled what she supposed must have once been a scythe-clawed limb of one such creature off the floor. It was light in her hands and she ignored the soft buzz that dug into her nerves where ever her skin touched its surface. It was in the following chamber, the round chamber littered with scraps of torn cloth and aether-scorched bone that was surely their destination, that she drew near enough to listen closely.
"How could this be? They had all the resources they could have needed."
"We cannot stand for this. We risked too much."
"The glyphs were perfect. They had to have been. Checked a dozen times at least."
"Sabotage? Do you think this was sabotage?"
Three hooded heads turned and gauged one another, tense and disbelieving. Then something whispered and went crack! and three then found itself short one, which had somehow ended up rolling upon the ground, trailing a heavy dribble of crimson.
Delial very nearly took another before they turned and saw her stepping forward. That head crunched sickly instead as the stiff blackened claws dug and tore through the side of its skull, sending the rest of its body falling bonelessly to join its fallen comrade. She did not bother to retrieve her makeshift weapon. The one that remained stared, raising its - no, his hands as though he intended to fight back. He would have a knife upon his person, she knew, but he hesitated for far, far too long. Her hands met his chest and she pushed outwards with raw aether, blasting the wind from his lungs and his feet off the ground. His body tumbled to a halt little more than a yalm away but before he could rise, his chest was met with a none-too-gentle boot that pinned him down hard. Delial relented only when she felt cleats scrape bone, locking her gaze to wide, young eyes.
"Now," she said, "I think we ought have some words."
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