Loka turned from the Inquisitor to the road at the bottom of the embankment.  The shadows stretched long across the mud and hip-high grasses as the sun reluctantly heaped itself above the wretched moor, and the nocturnal mist had begun to lift, thinning into a bleak white haze.  The rent torsos and scattered limbs of the dead travelers remained where they had been found, the blood slowly congealing into a dark, foetid mass.  The first insects buzzed mindlessly from one to the next, filling the morning air with a droning cacophony that set her stomach twisting.

"It couldn't understand you," she murmured, tersely. "All it understood was pain."