Freagon did his usual thing: he went silent for a couple of beats, probably assessed the situation again visually (though this was persistently difficult to confirm, owing to the fact he was a nightwalker), and moved on from whatever was said. She thought she sensed an unspoken question on the air, though she decided only to allude to it briefly.

“Hostage situations are… Decisive action is usually best taken, as the consequences tend to be easier to deal with.” Irah began, taking a short breath to choose her words carefully before continuing. ”You surely remember your time being affected by a Swaigh, Sir Freagon, I should think that punishment enough for these craven child-murderers… though if you wish to kill them, I cannot stop you. I simply think that if they overcome the trial before them, they might yet learn the value of the mercy they denied others… and if not, they die as they lived. Cowards.” Irah explained, offering both an explanation for her callousness and her perspective at large. She truly did take particular umbrage with those who killed children–she knew it was somewhat different among the short-lived races, owing to a certain factor of mortality, but imagined the pain of losing a child cut no less deep regardless. To kill an innocent and blameless child… it was an act of cruelty and disregard for life so perverse that even a lifetime of penance and atonement would likely never make up for it. To bring Rilon’s gifts of suffering to such people was a charge she took rather solemnly–indeed, that was why she had formed her relationship with Weriz in the first place. It was why she called him “Justice”, in her tongue, something Freagon had no doubt noticed too. He’d seemed judgemental of her decision to judge others for their sins and mete out appropriate punishment… which she supposed she understood.

Irah gave Lhirin’s shoulder another squeeze to get his attention, and nodded towards the open entrance. He’d know the look in her eyes well enough that she thought it better he survey the interior too, to see if there was anything he picked up that others might not–it happened more often than one might think. Lhirin always took the most peculiar observations from situations, though later he usually ended up cascading through a chain of logic she hadn’t considered and came to a useful conclusion she would never have been able to herself. She always enjoyed when that happened.

---

Lhirin’s eyelid twitched slightly, then the other–asynchronous, which he noted internally–then both eyes narrowed fractionally and the neutral, if slightly grim, line of his lips turned down slightly as his feathered brows drew together in a frown. “Not my intention,” he said frankly, realizing he had miscalculated on a number of fronts. Perhaps the piaan had adled his mind more than he’d thought. How troublesome. The deigan hybrid felt Irah’s touch in the next moment, the squeeze. He turned to regard her, saw the directionality of her nod, and though it took a few instants, understood her intent. Mostly her gesture led his eyes past the open threshold and into the interior where he took in brief details, cross referencing them with Freagon’s words almost concurrently.

Still, he didn’t quite let his focus shift to that just yet, though he did give Irah a small nod to show that he’d understood even as he put his hand over hers briefly and squeezed. Someone more well adjusted might have smiled to show fondness, but Lhirin was already moving on, turning his attention to Bren.

“Mmm, messy. My apologies. Usually I have more…precise control. Irah?” The deigan mage glanced briefly at his companion, before tilting his head–not in a nod, but as to indicate the healer and–surely–his wound.

“If you could…mm, compensate for my error Vreharhn..” he said as his silver eyes held hers for a moment, warm, intense, but sharp as ever. He squeezed her hand once more, then let go, not needing a reply. Irah always did what needed to be done, provided it was within her ability.

Considering the problem of the Healer’s wound to be essentially taken care of, Lhirin moved to the next thing, literally. Crossing the distance while avoiding the bodies, Lhirin entered the farmhouse through the door that the wounded bandit had burst from. Though as he entered, he cast his eyes up first, then to the corners to either side of the threshold, before looking anywhere else.

Once within the space, his eyes shifted back and forth, first in a swift examination as he lightly extended his magical senses throughout, expending as little energy as possible to sense for anything that might show up or respond to such sensory probing. After a short while he began to scan slower, more deliberately, taking in every detail he could while he withdrew the majority of his magical senses beyond a narrow band that roughly aligned with his vision…and hovered off the surface of his clothes by an inch or so.

Lhirin noted the chest and did sweep it both swiftly and more deliberately with his vision and arcane sense, but he filed it away as a point of particular interest while he focused elsewhere on less obvious things.

There was some particular focus on corners, seams where walls met floor, tables and beneath them, as well as what he could see or feel (magically) on the four bandits within the room. Throughout he remained poised in the case of a concealed threat, his blade still in hand, his attention still enough on his hearing and the smells in the room to detect things that might be off…as well as shifts in the air against his skin or through his plumage.

Lhirin would mentally catalogue the belongings of the bandits, any objects within the room that might stand out–tools, vials, weapons, things that wouldn’t generally be found in a farmhouse–while putting commonplace things in a separate mental list. If he found nothing of note beyond the chest, he’d go to that next and inspect any lock it might have to see if he could figure the best way to access its contents. If there was no lock, well…he’d open it and see what he found. If he were to open the chest, he’d do so while standing beside it, if possible, rather than in front of it, in case it was trapped or something similar. He’d also, notably, open it very slowly, carefully, to see if he began to feel the tug of mechanisms, which if he felt, he would immediately ease the chest closed again and reconsider. This time, he was taking the time he needed to try and overcompensate for the way the piaan had just briefly before affected his processing.

For most of the skirmish, the half-palanter was relegated to the position of an observer, eyes and ears tracking the motion and - as one was wont to do if one had spent long enough being in a more hands-on medical field of expertise - idly analyzing the mechanism and severity of each and every injury sustained in the conflict. The unaffiliated sometimes found it a bit morbid - well, at least the humans did; palanters were more likely to find it ... quaint, one might say.
Punctured lung - not very lethal without an infection setting in unless there was blood or air escaping to the chest cavity and compressing the heart. Intestinal injuries? Usually a slow and gradual, messy death unless one of the few main lood vessels in the area was involved. Piercing thigh injury could go either way. Either fairly survivable or - oh, it was the version with massive bleeding. Multiple fairly imminently lethal throat injuries - about half of which from Freagon, who was more just executing already-disabled targets rather than fighting...
All-in-all, it was a fairly speedy affair. Between arrows, bolts, blades and magic, it was but a few minutes until every bandit she could see was either dead or quite severely incapacitated - by her count, only three remained with the human knight more or less dragging one last remaining bandit out of the barn, to join the one with a punctured lung that had been among the first to be injured (and another who was preoccupied clutching his abdomen). By the manner Yanin seemed somewhat unconcerned with whatever was left behind in the barn, one could conclude there were no more living humans in there - not counting the human knight's very own squire.

All remaining action was concentrated by the farmhouse which Madara didn't unfortunately have a good vantage point of - she had seen Deo'Irah and Lhirinthyl vanish entirely behind the corner, followed by the older nightwalker who, it seemed, went forth to enter the building. Or not quite; there was a bang the half-palanter could hear even from her perch quite some ways off, prompting Freagon to hurriedly jump back, partway back into the surgeon-seamstress's field of vision.
She couldn't see what the human squire was doing - as far as she knew, he was still in the barn - but Yanin seemed to snap to attention, though keeping his halberd loosely pointed at the unarmed bandit he had extracted from the barn.
Faintly, just about, the half-palanter could discern the words of an unfamiliar man, proclaiming the end of fun and, oh, threatening the life of 'their healer'. So Bren was alive, then, at least for the time being. To think of it, Borstown's healer was most likely not immune to the influence of an angel of fear, was he? Seemed like a terrible oversight indeed.
But that, as they said, was a matter for later. For now, the battlefield was reasonably secure and if she yet had a role to fulfill here and now, it was likely to become actual very soon. Granted, there was one tiny little matter to take note of still - their employer, Vela Bor herself. The little old lady of Borstown did come with security detail of her own, but technically, the half-palanter had also been told to hang back with her. Which could either complicate or not complicate matters.
On one hand, things could yet get unpleasantly messy for the penin to witness, on the other, it was better to be ready as soon as the fighters were done doing their thing, and there was not much left to see here. Besides, Lady Bor could see as easily as Madara did that the threat other than the roaring man was as good as neutralized, and from what little she had seen about her personality back at the manor, she was absolutely the kind to go forth as soon as possible when the lives of her subjects were concerned.
The baroness hadn't exactly waited for any of the fighters to declare the manor safe before she entered and rushed upstairs, after all.

She paused for a brief moment - no, there was no feasible way for even her fairly keen hearing to distinguish what, if anything, the two deigan and nightwalker responded, especially not over the rustling of leaves and other foresty ambiance.
"I would appear it's now pertinent to relocate," Madara noted - just about loudly enough for the penin to hear in the next tree over, and with that, she dropped to the ground, with nearly the same ease she had displayed climbing it. Graceful landings were a bit tricky in a tunic, but could be worse.
She could hear the roaring man continue with his demands as she neared Yanin's position (about thirty meters, he had said; it was safe enough to assume wherever he was, was reasonably safe position. Good enough to have an overview - though not soon enough to have any means of giving input on their plans in this hostage situation, if they even had ones.
Lhirinthil opted for lighting of all things, relieving the bandit's brain of its duties and letting the current operate the man's muscles in tearing their subject's throat open.
Madara didn't quite wince; the palanteran expression of displeasure tended towards a bare-fanged rasp, and it was a faint version of that which momentarily marred her countenance. That was ... annoying. Not overly likely to be lethal with the three of them there, but nevertheless quite tedious to properly fix. She didn't see clearly enough from her position, but she wouldn't have been overly surprised if it required some opening up again to fully undo ... magical healing could be very blunt, binding together whatever came in contact, much like a mangled wound left to heal on its own over time.
Vela Bor hadn't explicitly stated she preferred as little additional harm to Bren as possible, but those things generally went without saying. It wasn't a good look for them, least for the ones directly responsible for the mess.

In any case, the brute was very definitely dead, and whoever was left indoors, their fate in the middle of being discussed, was probably firmly under the watchful eyes of both Freagon and Lhirinthyl. The swaigh was hardly needed for longer, was it?
"Deo'Irah? Would you mind?" Surely, the deigan might have noticed that other action had functionally ceased and they had a bit of an audience now, albeit one that kept its distance.



The last bandit was one of the apparently younger ones, wearing mail and still a couple pieces hardened leather on his right hand and arm - though neither the shortsword he had managed to draw nor the leather vambrace and gauntlet had managed to save the integrity of his right hand, nearly split in two.
Yanin had pinned him even after mangling his dominant hand and made him discard anything even remotely harmful - belt, dagger, pieces of armor that were easy enough to remove, even boots. He was now glaring at the human knight from where he had been rather unceremoniously dropped, holding his trembling injured right hand to his chest. The guy had been the last man standing on his side, and had hence received the rather dubious honour of being the only one who was still reasonably able to speak. The others were all too injured or, overwhelmingly, too dead.

"Was that anyone important?" the Viper asked when Sir Freagon impaled the brute, sounding perhaps even more detached than usual. Most of his attention was on keeping track of anything and everything, rendering the usually expressionless man even more so.
From observing the killing field, to trying to figure out who those bandits were, to trying to figure out a way for Deo'Iran, Freagon and Kinder have a little meeting bar most of the people here before Kinder's time for visiting this plane expired.
His group - and the other - were all alive and did not appear to be grievously injured, which was well enough, even though the hostage situation could have gone better. For the time being, Yanin opted to simply not think about the undue suffering inflicted on Borstown's healer. There was not much he could do about the limp body lying by the farmhouse's door.

"These people don't work entirely on their own," he raised his voice to remind the others once they began to discuss whether or not to execute the remaining incapacitated bandits on the spot. "It's yet uncertain how much any of them know. Past that, it's Lady Bor's prerogative to decide what to do with them."
Even if neither he nor Irah - nor anyone else here - had no qualms about playing judge and executioner, at the end of the day, not only was he a knight and a Fadewatcher, they were also presently directly employed by someone who was, for better or worse, a higher instance of local law.
At least some of them ought to uphold proper procedure and whatever semblance of justice the world had left. Even if something deep within insisted that some of these people might already know enough to become a threat in the future.

But once they started taking out anyone who might be a problem ... well, his father might approve, which was enough to reinforce it was a rotten tactic. A world for those who could get away with things, a world of the strongest and most cunning's right.

“Yeh, seems things are... mostly under control,” replied Vela's voice to Madara's suggestion to relocate, though her tone suggested that she was far from at ease just yet. Just as nimbly as she had bounded from the ground into the tree, the elderly penin simply dropped straight back down again, landing on her feet with an audible thud, bending her knees to absorb the impact.
A small grunt escaped her as she moved her crossbow – string still drawn and a bolt still loaded – to her left hand while her right one went down to rub the outside of her knee. A couple of seconds later she straightened back up, stretched and twisted her back and rolled her shoulders, before finally resuming a proper grip on her weapon and moving to follow Madara.

Over by the farmhouse itself Freagon stepped aside to allow Lhirin to enter, all while staring at Irah with his usual blank expression while listening to her explanation, all while internally bemoaning once again how much this woman talked. Once she finished speaking by calling the bandits “cowards,” the old knight simply shrugged and turned away, offering no opinion on what she had just said. Truly, the only way he could care less about what happened to these ruffians was if he had never met them at all; as long as they were rendered harmless somehow, be that through magical means, by binding them with rope, by disabling all their limbs or just by slitting their throats meant nothing to him. He also did not react at all to his own experience of being trapped by the power of a swaigh.

When Yanin asked about the falchion-wielding bandit from his wounded prisoner.
“Wha-... urgh...” The bandit groaned, squirming in place to turn and see who his captor was talking about. Upon laying eyes on the all but certainly dead bandage-clad brute, the man's eyes instantly widened in shock. “K-, f-, ugh, shit! You're damn right he's important, he's our commander!”

As she approached along with Madara, Vela heard Yanin's deliberations regarding what to do with the surviving bandits. “Restrain them if you think it's safe, kill them if you can't,” she instructed them, the coldness in her voice tinged with a hint of worry as her eyes scanned the battlefield, looking for – but not yet spotting – Bren. “I wanna know if these g'vassin have friends I need to worry about. Then I'll decide whether we'll hang them from the tree after we've gotten these poor people out of it.”
Sure enough, now that things had calmed down and there was time to take in their surroundings, any of them might notice the sizable oak in the middle of the farm, almost equidistant to the farmstead, the barn and the tool shed Caleb was still hiding in. It was quite noticeable on its own, standing nearly nine meters tall and boasting a broad and thick canopy, enough so that one might not even notice anything unusual about it at a glance. It took a closer look to notice the motionless bodies hanging in there, with the leaves mostly obscuring most of them.

Inside the farmstead, Lhirin would make the same observations as Freagon had previously while additionally confirming that there were no traces of magical wards. He took the time to move slowly, scanning the space meticulously as he did and making abundantly to identify any threats that might reveal themselves, but it seemed as though the danger had passed... at least until the catatonic bandits managed to escape the mental prisons the Angel of Fear had put them in.
The chest, likewise, seemed entirely mundane and quite safe to interact with. Even the most superficial examination would reveal that it not only did not have a keyhole for a built-in locking mechanism, but did not even have a hasp and staple to attach a padlock to. It seemed to serve simply as a container, and not theft-prevention. It also seemed rather old, worn and relatively cheap.
Opening the chest would reveal no mechanisms more nefarious than hinges that were in severe need of maintenance. As the interior was revealed, the immediately most obvious thing he would find, laying on top of everything and mostly obscuring the rest of its contents, was a large cuirass of plate armor that looked rather scratched and dented in a way that clearly suggested that it had seen battle before. With his keen eye and intimate knowledge of metallurgy, Lhirin would be able to tell that it was fairly well-cared for but far from the most impressive piece of craftsmanship he had seen. Its steel was not hardened nor tempered, and looked like it had fairly average carbon-content.
Past the cuirass he would notice it what appeared to be a bundle of scarlet cloth.

The bandit sputtered when inquired about the dead brute, twisting his bruised torso and still guarding his mangled hand to actually look at the large, shocked and impaled man, only to swear and, with what was perhaps surprising intensity given that he had been half-dragged past a dozen of his dead comrades, and could easily see at least another dozen if he bothered to take a look at the farthest side of the battlefield the counterattack had originated from, proclaimed, "You're damn right he's important, he's our commander!”
Yanin might not have been good at reading reactions, but it was at least more of one than that of just seeing death, nay, slaughter, on their side. Not many of "you" left ... were there? Not hours before, Quintin had reported these people had been talking something implying a successfully completed mission and returning home.
"And who'd that be, exactly?" Yanin continued with his line of questioning - not that he had much better to do with his time for the time being, especially with the angel of fear still there. "You, your commander."

For as long as the bandit kept talking, he would stay alive, at least. Surely, he could see that his fellow bandits had lost already, with only five of them being - at least physically - still functional, and two more being alive, if liable to expire in less than a day without medical aid. More accurate estimates were best left to the actual healers here. Their mission had been rendered a failure ... or had it? They wouldn't be reaping the benefits of the mission, but whatever it was, it could still have been completed, for, most likely, worse.
This guy only had his life, death and health left to bargain with. Maybe those of the other dead or incapacitated bandits. Maybe a family or friends, somewhere - seemed on brand for people such as these to threaten the families of others, and though Yanin himself wouldn't let incur any harm upon innocents - no further harm than the removal of a family member past redemption, anyway - then these people wouldn't exactly know it.
Lady Bor wasn't exactly subtle in telling them that if these people couldn't be safely restrained or tried something, she wouldn't mind if they died. Her focus sounded to be solely on Borstown and her people - not the wider tracking down of whatever nefarious things these bandits or their employers had been up to in Rodoria, or even Reniam at large. And she was quite blatant about being ready to execute them on the spot for the crimes they had already committed even if they remained cooperative. Safer for them all, certainly.
It would be up to the guy to convince them in any one outcome. Death, imprisonment, being healed ... or not. Though there had been no harm brought upon Yanin himself, he could feel a faint twinge of pain just looking at the poor sod's hand. HE definitely wouldn't have much use of it if it was left as-is.

There had been a fair amount of time for the bandit to volunteer as much as he was willing to based on the initial questions.
And, pray tell, what was your mission, and what drove you to attack a nearby town last night? Another pause. Farther away, Sir Freagon and Lhirinthyl had disappeared into the farmhouse. "Up to you how this goes from here. Make a good enough case and I might see if any of the healers here - once they're done all they can for the town's healer - can do anything about your hand, your commander, or anyone else here. You'd probably need to be quick and conclusive for most of them, if it isn't too late already."
It would be a waste of resources, perhaps, especially since there was no guarantee Lady Bor's or the people's will wouldn't be to execute these people, anyway, but it was an argument.

The wounded bandit simply glared at Yanin silently upon being asked who he and his commander were, clearly pushed past the point where he felt like being cooperative without some sort of additional encouragement. As the silence went on Vela moved all the way up beside the human knight and, crossbow still loaded and held in a grip to be ready to aim and fire, fixed the bandit with a cold stare of her own.
A mere several meters behind her came Quintin, resuming his role as bodyguard now that the greater battle was over. He had returned his bow to its holster for the time being and instead occupied his hands with his slender longsword, which he was currently idly wiping with a piece of cloth.

It was not until Yanin posed his second question and offered the bandit the incitement of potential healing, that the wounded man broke his silence to burst into a coarse laughter that quickly turned into a coughing fit. “You'd wanna heal me just so I'll make a prettier corpse after y'all hang me?” he spat at the ground and swore venomously under his breath. “The only way you're getting a damn thing outta me is after you've healed me and let me go. Do that, and I'll shout the answer back to y'all as I leave. I promise.” The word “promise” was spoken with as much sarcasm as a word could possibly contain.

The man didn't appear to be overly eager to talk. Regrettable, but not exactly unexpected.
"If either of you two can speak, feel free," Yanin noted idly in the general direction of the two less responsible bandits in the vicinity, "The offer stands; I don't discriminate." Markedly, his tone of voice didn't seem at all altered by the bandit's lack of cooperation. The man hadn't claimed he didn't know anything, nor tried to assert that he was only following orders. Could be telling. Unless he had been asleep, he'd also been fairly slow to react to the commotion outside.

To the original bandit, he offered a shrug. It was a deliberate action rather than an incidental motion.
"Your hand will hurt less. Whether you will be executed, imprisoned for the next sixty years, or something else entirely is to be determined later." He couldn't really force the man to speak, but he could voice his preference for making it as annoying for the uncooperative in turn. He had heard about the concept of death the fast way out. Some might even say the easy one. Yanin was just there to make sure it was no longer the bandit's choice, in one direction or another. "I'm not precisely fond of hanging people. Figured it was more of a 'you' thing. No care for even your fellow bandits?" For all the killing, some of those people could be surprisingly brotherhoody. Form of compartmentalization, he guessed.

Perhaps Deo'Irah or one of her friends was better in making people talk. Or one of her friends could outright read minds between their several forms of wordless communication. Divines worked in mysterious ways. And maybe it was even worth it to be wasteful.

Irah saw fit to leave Lhirin to his own devices at that point: he could look after himself… and Sir Yanin was interrogating an uncooperative bandit in the distance. Irah could not really join them without exposing them all to Weriz’ magic, and those who escaped the prison of the worst their mind could conjure were rarely chatty afterwards–it would not suffice as a means of enticement. With that there seemed to be little else for them to need Weriz for, and Irah knew that the sooner she stopped accumulating taint the better, so she politely asked her friend to depart and thanked them for their service ere moving to close the distance between them.

“What did they do to deserve being hanged?” Irah asked as she came within speaking distance, looking down at the bandit with curious eyes and an exceptionally neutral expression.

As soon as the bandit's gaze turned to Irah his expression darkened with a whole new kind of hatred. "They killed the world."

Irah looked around briefly, surveying the world that very much still existed, and returned her gaze to his.

“The world seems to be still standing, so perhaps you mean a specific section of it? Did people like them destroy your home and force you into this life of vagrancy?”

He spat at the ground in front of Irah's feet. "Creatures like you and them will bring the destruction of every home. You've killed everyone with your damned plague!"

“Ah,” Irah began, sighing softly, something in her eyes changing from curious to… understanding. Not accepting, nor justifying, but at least understanding the measure of these people a little more than before. “I could tell you that the Withering ravages everyone, heedless of race or creed, but then you would ask me where it did come from if not non-humans… and I would not have an answer to give you, because we do not know. I could appeal to your sense of reason, and question why non-humans would unleash something that would wipe them out too… but reason did not lead you to the conclusion you’ve come to, and it cannot deliver you from it.” Irah continued, looking him up and down piteously. She did not address him again, instead turning to Lady Bor.

“Hatred has taken him, and he will not provide answers even under duress… he died when he lost his world. What haunts us here is merely a shell, filled with vengeance. Judge him as you see fit.”

---

No traps, barely anything of note at all, not even an unexpected threat. Simultaneously good, slightly satisfying, and yet disappointing. It was the result of being primed for action and then finding that one’s vigilance was not rewarded. Still, he was grateful and though he did not let himself relax as of yet, Lhirin did allow himself to focus more singularly for a moment. His eyes trailed first over the armor, then once he could he carefully shifted it, and when nothing else occurred he fully moved it aside and there it was: evidence of interest.

Lhirin’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. He unfolded one of the shocks of red cloth…. ‘The Crusader’s Guild,’ he thought darkly, briefly gritting his teeth before he balled the cloth back up in his free hand and then rose. Lhirin didn’t care about the cuirass, it was of middling quality, well-cared for, but not truly remarkable in any way. It was like the armor of the brute Freagon had killed.

Lhirin stood, casting one more lingering gaze over the interior of the building that he could see, before shaking his head and leaving it from whence he’d come.

Irah was gone, but he’d heard her footsteps fading in the direction of the other battlefield, it was just as well that she checked on the others if the mistake he’d made had already been ameliorated. That in mind, Lhirin’s silver gaze shifted over to the healer, noting Irah’s work before he looked to Freagon.

“Unwise to leave the healer alone,” he stated. “Would you stay, or should I?” The question was delivered in a neutral tone that spoke of it being a purely practical communication moreso than anything else. It would be especially…problematic to leave Bren alone given they were still catatonic from the influence of the Swaigh.

Freagon offered a curt shrug. "I'll stay. Someone has to tie up the thugs in there anyway. You can go catch up with your vreharhn."

Lhirin nodded in reply, but glanced at Bren again, his gaze lingering this time. "Messy business...I am...usually much more precise. It is the drug," he commented, the emotion in his voice difficult to parse, perhaps regret...perhaps annoyance directed inwards. He shook his head. The Knight of the Will hadn't displayed any sense of caring for such things, but it bore some explanation, if brief. Lhirin could recognize that the blunder would have made him look reckless and perhaps even foolish. He could be the former sometimes, he knew...but this had been less about that and more a result of interrupted cognition. "Should not have used so much magic at the manor. Inefficient given we knew the heale--no, that Bren needed to be retrieved." Lhirin pursed his lips briefly, looking up from Bren's catatonic form.

Then, without any further words, nothing to cap off the voice self-reflection or properly end their interaction for the moment--as people usually would have done--he turned and walked towards where he'd heard Irah's footsteps heading. He’d make his way across the distance, regarding the tree upon which the five bodies were hung, partially obscured in the foliage.

When he came into earshot, Irah was addressing Lady Bor, but he only caught the last sentence, ‘Judge him as you see fit.’ Lhirin closed enough space to be easily heard, and spoke up before anything was actually done with the one-handed bandit. “Crusader’s Guild,” Lhirin offered, half raising his previously free hand and letting the scarlet tabard emblazoned with their distinctive symbols. His tone was somewhat perfunctory, words ever-so-slightly clipped in a way that made his speech sound somewhat staccato–though this was essentially how he always spoke.

“Found in a chest where they were holding Bren. One of many,” he added as he came up beside Irah. He let the scarlet tabard drift to the dirt as his silver eyes moved to the wounded bandit. When the tabard landed, Lhirin–still looking far too intensely at the man–deliberately ground his heel down on it. “I know not if he told you anything of worth,” the deigan mage began, something dark and electric in his eyes as he stared at the man with an intensity that differed entirely from what the others would have come to know–to some degree–was the norm for him. This was more like…carefully controlled anger, but more targeted and precise, sharp.

He sheathed his Runeblade, finally and as he did so, he lightly rubbed Irah’s forearm nearest him before reaching into one of his pouches and extracting one of his iron needles. Among the same needles he’d used to deal with the divines back at the manor. “...but I doubt it is what is needed.”

“If need be, I am…certain, we can coax more useful things from this creature.” It would seem, to the others, that Lhirin didn’t even consider the man to be the same as them, as if he weren’t even worth considering as a sentient, thinking being. In fact…the deigan was looking at the bandit more like he were a particularly difficult object he’d violently stubbed his toe on…or as if he were an insect–perhaps a centipede, or something equally unpleasant and grotesque. It was…more emotion than he’d shown for the majority of their time knowing him. Irah would understand that Lhirin was essentially saying he’d be exceptionally willing to torture whatever information they needed from the man.

Of course, as she would also be aware, torture was not necessarily an effective interrogation technique. Physical torture especially. Still, the threat of further, prolonged harm, rather than a likely swift end by hanging or other form of execution might serve as a much more effective motivator for the man. Especially given the fact that his unnecessarily tight grip on the needle, along with his expression, would pretty clearly indicate that it was neither an act nor an empty threat. He was…very willing to carry out the grim task and though he did not precisely relish it, well…Irah always said it best.

‘Forswear Mercy. Invite Malice.’

A shadow began to descend over the face of the well-liked, generous and sympathetic Baroness Vela Bor as soon as the bandit started uttering his nonsense about the hanged handful of people having “killed the world.” The shadow only deepened when he a moment later clarified the means of killing the world as being through “your damned plague” and also redefined the group responsible as including at least Irah. She was intimately familiar with this rhetoric and was entirely unsurprised when Lhirin arrived to announce the bandits as actually belonging to the Crusader's Guild.
Squatting in place and setting aside her crossbow, Vela fixed her neon-green eyes on the wounded man's face. “Well? What do you think, g'vassi? Can this mage coax more useful things from you?”
The bandit, who appeared to also be a crusader, grimaced. Referring to Lhirin as a mage had been very intentional; there were very few non-mages who did not fear the esoteric and potentially invasive powers held by users of magic. “Y'all're gonna pay...”
“Do you think it'll end when you die?” the penin mused ominously, shifting closer to him as she spoke. “You know who I am; I am the law here, g'vassi. I will give him permission to trap your soul here even after you die. I will have your undead corpse dragged all the way back to Etlon so you can explain yourself to your boss. What do you think Kevalorn is going to do to one of his goons turned zombie?”
“You're bluffing,” he muttered, though he did not sound entirely convinced.
“You should probably hurry,” the baroness suggested grimly, “time is running out. You're bleeding, and he's already reading your mind. Tell us something good.”
“Tiny rock-brained freak!” The bandit spat viciously, and a glob of viscous saliva mixed with blood splattered over Vela's face-plates. “You will all bur –”
Barely had the spit landed on the baroness' face before Quintin started moving, moving a step forward and, quickly and efficiently, thrust the tip of his longsword into the crusader's open mouth, through the back of his throat and into the base of his spine. The insults and threats died on his lips as the light behind his eyes was instantly extinguished.

Vela stood back up with a sigh, casually retrieving a handkerchief from a pocket and wiping her face. “It was a long shot,” she said, sounding mildly annoyed. “We will try with any other prisoners we take, but the Guild is frustratingly good at compartmentalizing information. These common thugs probably don't know anything; the only one who had a realistic chance of knowing anything interesting was their commander. But by figuring out that they are crusaders we've already learned more than they wanted us to.”
She turned to look at Irah and Lhirin, and her tone and expression immediately shifted to worry. “What about Bren? Did you find him? Is he okay?”

About ten meters north from there, while all of this was going on, Jaelnec found himself leaning his back against the side of the barn while working on catching his breath. He was not quite exhausted yet, but he could tell quite clearly that he had exerted himself to a level where he would not have been able to keep up his performance for much longer. Stamina management was something he had only really learned in terms of physical exercise and theory, but he was beginning to realize that it was much harder to do in the midst of battle. He had pushed himself nearly to the utmost of his abilities in terms of skill and physical prowess when he could probably have won against opponents like these without straining himself anywhere near that much.
Even so it was still odd, since he was sure that will all his endurance training he should have been able to keep going
Pressure in his left hand. Resistance as it moved forward. The tip of a spear burrowing into the exposed flesh of a man's throat. Blood gushing from the wound. The sound as he choked on his own blood.
Jaelnec blinked and swallowed, and suddenly realized that his heartbeat was quickening rather than slowing, and it was getting harder to breathe.
Grass under his feet, just slightly slippery under his boots. He stepped forward as he parried. He could hear steel sliding against steel. The sword thrust at him was mere millimeters from his side.
Tremors shook the squire's body as his eyes widened. The warm air and sun abruptly felt cold enough to chill him to the bone.
He could feel and hear his sword scraping against bone. He could feel it pierce the brain. The resistance as he dislodged it from the man's skull.
He thrust while being stabbed at, and saw the deadly sword moving quickly tip-first directly toward him. Less than half a step forward, and it would have found his chest.
His sword slipped under the shield as the man tried desperately to protect himself, and he felt its blade slit his throat. Heard the gurgle.
His opponent was momentarily disarmed. He saw the fear in his eyes, but the man still had a sword and dagger on his hip. He slit his throat before he could do anything. He felt warm blood on soaking through his clothes. Realized this was his first kill. This was a sapient with thoughts, hopes and dreams. With parents. A family. A past. But no future. Because of him. These people died by his hand.

Jaelnec dropped the spear he had been clutching frantically and instead clasped his left hand over his mouth. He was not entirely sure why; it was either to stop himself from vomiting or from screaming, but he did not know which. He felt tears burning in the corners of his eyes... but slowly, gradually over several minutes, he managed to get his breathing under control and to slow his heartbeat. But full recovery was going to take a while.

Lady Bor, and after presumably dismissing the swaigh, Deo'Irah and Lhirinthyl moved over to them. Madara observed her approach, taking half a step back, but once it became evident there was no effect on the humans or penin, didn't waste time hurrying over to the farmhouse to take a closer look at the damage.
The appearance of the deigan instantly made the this far quite uncooperative bandit to go on the offensive - as much as someone injured, unarmed and with the spike of a halberd pointed at his chest at just slightly out of the reach of his remaining hand could be. Which was mainly spitting insults.

'Killed the world?' The ... farmers or homesteaders or whatever these people here were? 'You people?' What bloody people? The plague - the Withering? Not that he needed to wait for clarification for too long, since Lhirinthyl tossed a tabard onto the ground and did his best to try and grind it into the dirt. Fucking Crusader's Guild. Of course it had to be these people, and not merely a hired band of ragtag mercenaries. Any information about their plans would be beneficial, but at least one question had been answered. Of course Kevalorn and the lot would try to blame the Withering on 'literally anyone who is not human'. Naturally.
Looking down at the crusader, Yanin wondered what brought a man to be so full of fanatical rage towards unwitting passersby, but perhaps he didn't want to know. Or maybe he had a good enough idea already. The poor sod had lost everyone, and these bloody bastards were the only ones to welcome him. It didn't matter that the overarching goal of this group was just as bogus as encompassing some random farmers living in the rear end of nowhere in the blame for the Withering, they had given him a purpose and an enemy to fight, and that was that.
Was it really, then, as Deo'Irah said? That he was now long past redemption? The guy looked what, Jordan's age? Lady Bor and Lhirinthyl threatening with torture when he, a human, had not probably didn't help with first impressions.
Quintin seemed to run out of patience with the insults thrown at his superior and impaled the fledgling crusader. Yanin didn't stop him. The only visible reaction he seemed to have was him righting his halberd and resting its butt on the ground.

"These two -" one with a crossbow bolt in his guts and another with a bodkin arrow through his lung "- and the four in the farmhouse remain," Yanin summarized, or perhaps wanted to confirm.
By the end of the day, they would probably be all dead. It was safer for them all this way, if none of them ever reached their destination. No doubt, there was the chance they'd have their own investigation into their lost, what, miscellaneous assault group?
"Might need a cleanup here, or their investigation will lead them straight to Borstown," Yaning noted. It was unclear how much of their presence here was known ahead of time, and how much was incidental. "The more we learn about what they're up to, the better. Might be more forthcoming to a human alone asking." He wasn't the best one for the task, as a rule. The most he had was patience. So Quintin? Jordan?
Between the deigan, Lady Bor and Quintin, there was probably little need for him to stand around. Might as well as see if there was anything else on these people, their commander, or the chest.
Before he left to poke around the battlefield and eventually head to the farmhouse, he noted to Irah,"Freagon might want to you and Kinder - by yourselves. Soon." He could probably keep the squires and assorted other people preoccupied if here and now was good enough.
And, to the baroness, "They did find Bren. He's alive, at least." Deo'Irah probably wouldn't have left him behind and come over here if his condition was imminently critical. The details were up to her to sort out.

“Bren was wounded during the struggle, as their leader had faced a Swaigh before. Lhirinthyl had… a lapse of judgement, and extricating him from the leader’s grip was messy. I stabilised him immediately and he is in no physical danger, though Madara having a look at him is wise–her skilled hands will ensure his proper convalescence. He was subjected to the aura, however, so answers will not be forthcoming. I see little point in cleaning up here–if a contingent of the Crusader’s Guild comes this close to Borstown, they will attack it regardless of provocation, if this group is anything to go by. Perhaps when Bren has awoken he will give us the information we need to assess our next steps… though I believe I understand why they were after Bren: someone in their upper echelons must have the Withering.” Irah replied to Vela, her tone lacking the normal hint of irritation it had when she used Lhirin’s full name. He had erred, yes, but it was mostly under the influence of the piaan–and he had used it for a noble purpose, even if Irah thought the decision to use it was foolish. She, too, had made foolish decisions for the sake of heroism today in accumulating as much taint as she had. It had worked out in the end, as they were alive and their objectives had been accomplished, so she was willing to give them both a pass.

After she was finished speaking Irah looked to the north to see Jaelnec leaning against the barn, weapons slipped from his grasp and a hand over his mouth. She left the main gathering of people without so much as a word, quickly hurrying over to his side, though upon getting closer she could see that he was physically uninjured. She proceeded to stand in front of him and gently moved to take his free right hand with her left if he seemed amenable to it. She didn’t speak, wanting to give him the space to process whatever was going on in his mind, though she would move to embrace him if he seemed like he needed it. She could not help but think of Jehla, her mother, and how she could make even the most forlorn of souls find a moment of peace with but the slightest touch and the right whispered words. She had not her mother’s gift for consolation, only for manipulation, and tried her best to evoke as much of that warmth and kindness as she could with her body language without the sharpness that came so easily to her.

"This group was ragtag. Only one individual of some significance. It's more likely they'd initially send a singular tracker or a pair rather than come in in force." If so, would it be preferable to take out any tracker that was spotted, or hold off unless something worthy of being reported back was discovered? How likely would it be that an observer would realize that a tracker had narrowed something down? "It may come to a larger raiding party, perhaps an incidental one... Best to delay that day as long as possible." Borstown was still mostly humans, even if Lady Bor's invitation might have garnered some undue attention. It wasn't a primary target.
Nevertheless, the town's defenses had been meager, and now they had been all but wiped out. If even this party had gone all-out, killing sleeping inhabitants house-by-house, not giving the remaining couple local Fadewatchers the respite... It would have been a full wipe, with little one ranger and an old lady with her adventuring days behind her could have done about it.
Maybe additional defenses were in order. Enough to let some people escape an unstoppable razing.

"Besides, it's thirty-something bodies in what was, presumably, someone's home," Yanin noted, pushing over a nearby body to see if there was anything of interest on it. It would require absolutely tyrannical control for none of several dozen people have no personal effect or trace of what they had been up to on them, or among the mess back in the barn. Maybe one or another had picked up some souvenirs from their most recent mission, if nothing else. People frequently acted contrary what you told them to do, at least if they thought it was inconsequential and they could get away with it.
"The fewer people come across a field of corpses, the better." Giving the five victims a proper burial, relieving the crusaders of whatever could be used to compensate the people who lost their fathers, sons and brothers in the dead Fadewatchers - everything identifiable would need reforging -, burning the tabards and chest, stacking the criminals in a hole and covering them up. Enough that autumn rain could do the rest.

The human knight briefly paused his investigative poking around when Deo'Irah came up with the idea that Bren might have been captured to help with ... stopping the Withering? Not even the king had avoided death from it; no one known had been cured, and even most powerful healers could only slow it down.
"I doubt Bren had enough renown to make himself that kind of target. He was a town healer, a kind, nice man, not anyone of unusual magical prowess or an avatar or Reina. If he was vastly unusual, Caleb might have noticed something. Or he would have been able to defend himself, or someone might have said something. One'd think Lady Bor would be long past concealing details of Bren's person by now. "Was he someone else before? Anyone have a good idea why they'd take Bren specifically?"
Jordan had asked something like that before, as had he himself, but it was from some kids and low-ranking Fadewatchers.
Speaking of the Withering, what was Deo'Irah doing? The deigan had evidently walked over to Jaelnec and Jordan - neither of which Freagon presumably wanted around, given he seemingly hadn't told his brand new squire. It would be a waste to have to summon Kinder again.



Jordan had spent most of the skirmish past the ranged portion of it fighting alongside his master - which was what he usually did, not so much because Sir Yanin needed his flank covered, but because he himself could use having one less side to watch - and, if really needed, there'd be someone to bail him out if he really messed up. The Viper was perhaps the only person who could reliably fight two people at once even without any advantage in weapons or armor, besides, maybe, now Sir Freagon, too.
He didn't exactly have too much time to watch Sir Yanin actually fight this time around (Sir Freagon on the other side wasn't really fighting, more slaughtering), but he was well familiar with the usual style of it - fast, precise, and somehow ... careful. Was that the best word? Never spending too long in range, never wasting energy, fast enough that it was difficult to even grasp how and why he had gotten past an opponent's defenses and then they were mortally wounded. He made it look effortless, something Jordan knew extremely well it bloody wasn't.
Even with years of practice, he felt every parry, every stab, every attempt to divert, yank or twist, every blink of an eye was full of having to fight, having to keep himself alive, having to incapacitate in any way possible... The wraiths would have killed him, too, no doubt, but they were clumsier, less real, a threat more akin to falling trees or sliding rocks than people. People who wouldn't back down and tell him where he made a mistake, people who were fully intent of killing him lest they themselves be killed.
He knew he could, should be better, more focused, more precise, lives depended on him, damnit, yet he could not escape the pain of a desperate block instead of the milder force of a deflection, and once even taking a hit to his vambrace strong enough that it might have actually dented the metal - from a glance, anyway.

In the end, there were only the barn and farmhouse left, and he was mostly fine - save for what was probably a new bruise on his right arm and the suspicion that his fingers and right wrist might be hurting the next day. As brutal as his master was in his training, he still clearly controlled the amount of force he put into blows; these men, well, they had no reason do do so, quite the opposite. Vaguely, Jordan recalled Sir Yanin pointing out that it can be harder to not kill a man to do so - probably held for 'severely injuring', too... But no matter.
Trying to catch a breath, the squire's eyes darted around to find the construct that currently hosted Kinder, "Could you, eh, please tell Caleb we're entering the barn now?" Better not to find out what 'friendly fire' would look like coming from a fallen thalk...
In the end, there were just two bandits in the barn, one of which was dead about as soon as Sir Yanin breached the building, the other of whom was disarmed and eventually dragged out by the knight. He didn't appear to need his help with it, so Jordan continued down the building, his spear still firmly in his grasp and flinching at any louder snap and crack. Well, he was sort of alone for now. The back of the barn was definitely not empty, though it mostly sounded like animals ... in particular, horses.
The section of the building they had entered from was a mess of bedrolls and general belongings, but thankfully no more people, dead or alive. The other side of the barn was, indeed, horses. Far too many of them for the space they occupied.
"It's okay, I'll come back for you later," Jordan mumbled, taking care to move between them without getting nowhere near their back ends, or moving too fast, or being too loud, or doing anything that could potentially spook the animals. One could assume these beasts were at least trained enough to carry these people in a mostly safe and organized manner through most circumstances, but other than that, he didn't exactly know anything about their tempers.
Unfortunately, somewhere behind large, not-exactly-silent animals would have been just about perfect place for someone to hide, so probably a walkthrough was needed. He did know horses, though, well enough that if any of them decided that it really didn't like his face attached to his body, he'd notice in time. But there seemed to be no one hiding there, and the horses remained somewhat calm in the dim room.
Still, being back outside through the opposite door was a relief, even if it came with a slightly different set of dangers.

There was shouting from the farmhouse's direction, where the other group ... and the angel of fear were. Right, he can't actually go there, can he? He moved along the barn's northern wall, enough to look about the corner at where Irah's group were, standing against a large man. What that bandit was holding made the squire's heart drop.
He could - right, he still had bolts and a crossbow (unlike Sir Yanin, whose bow was back at the forest's edge). So he could, at the very least, lean his spear against the wall and take aim, right? It was unlikely the brute would have noticed him back here. Probably.
Though it was probably very much unnecessary, he still tried to be slow and quiet (why was was his breathing so loud, and if he held his breath, his heartbeat?). It was only something like fifty meters, well within the useful range of his crossbow, and compared to his melee fighting, he could at least compete in accuracy with his superior with this weapon, but it was not exactly normal for him to have to aim so close to aim at someone on his side, even though the bandit conveniently seemed to have no armor whatsoever on his sizable torso.
And, Jordan's hands were trembling, whether it was from the hostage situation or just having fought. In the end, he ended up just bracing against the wall of the barn - he couldn't wobble the whole damn barn, so at least that took care of that. Should he try to take the shot? It was ... clear enough. If he didn't have enough control once he had a bolt through his heart and lung to actually act on his threat... Just as long as none of the people ended up moving fast in any intersecting direction. Sir Freagon definitely could be unexpectedly fast, and if he ended up hitting the old knight of all people... Somehow, it was less for fear of killing him, but rather whether Jordan himself would live to tell the tale.
There was a crackle - enough to make Jordan flinch, but thankfully not enough for him to accidentally pull the trigger, and all chaos broke loose - he was quite definite he saw the brute slit, not slit, gouge out Bren's throat before Sir Freagon intervened and impaled the guy. They ... had failed?

The human squire dropped his aim, and simply slumped against the wall rather than using it as a brace. Dully, he noted that Deo'Irah went over to the town healer to do something. Maybe not entirely failed. They had something like three rather competent healers, no? So he would maybe be fine, eventually, even if he currently laid limp like all the many sliced, stabbed, disfigured bandit corpses littering the place. One could hope. Although he likely wouldn't be fully the same. People sometimes just weren't, no matter how much you tried to help them afterwards.
Somehow, with the released tension, he couldn't really even feel any amount relieved, just numb. So he stayed there for a couple of minutes, enough so that people had moved around, Lhirin had entered and exited the farmhouse with something - he will care about what exactly later - Irah and he had both gone somewhere out of his sight. Faintly, he could hear people talking. Madara went over to check on Bren. Something like that.

He should probably get over there, too, before his master started wondering what happened to him and how, huh? Jordan closed his eyes, sighed, and pushed himself off the wall, only opening them again so he could actually grab his spear. Didn't bother to put away the crossbow for the time being, and mostly just used the spear as a walking stick as he made his way around the corner and moved closer to the others in no particular hurry.
There was a small clump of the others some thirty meters from the farmhouse, discussing something, though Sir Yanin had already begun investigating the corpses, and Jaelnec standing a bit further away from them, against the barn and still with his sword in his hand, though he almost looked ready to throw up. Right, the younger nightwalker hadn't followed him and Sir Yanin actually into the barn, had he? And it was probably something along the first time of him ... not sitting back and watching? There was something vague about pages of Will not fighting that Jordan recalled.
Not that watching was necessarily better, the corpses, the screams, oftentimes the loss of people you knew, the sheer helplessness of ... watching, just watching, most people were not fine with watching, the civilians at least weren't. Jalenec had been with Sir Fragon since he was ten, hadn't he?

The battle was over now, and now they had to fix what could be fixed, bury people, gather up their arrows, sort themselves out...
This time there would not be fellow Fadewatchers to go back to - well, sort of, there were the few survivors back in Borstown, but these guys had their own troubles and he didn't really know them -, nor the other workers of the Glades' estate, there was just Sir Yanin, for the first time since they joined Rodoria's guarding forces. And, well, he guessed these new people they were working with for the time being.
Sir Yanin's idea of supporting someone was largely just (maybe literally) picking them up and having them do stuff anyway, which surprisingly sometimes helped a little bit since it was something else to focus on. (Better the something else be doing something vaguely useful than, say, drinking so much you fell over sideways and forgot about everything for the next six hours.) Other than that, and maybe doing some things himself when you really couldn't, he wasn't exactly overly helpful, or perhaps didn't know how to be. The most he'd ever gotten out of the knight in regards of the dead or killing could be summarized more or less as, 'didn't like it.'
In the end, Jordan didn't even know how much exactly things like that really affected the knight.

Deo'Irah hurried over to Jaelnec, somewhat awkwardly stopping near him, maybe to make sure he was uninjurd. As far as Jordan knew (he hadn't had too much time to watch, but he hadn't seen him be hurt, at least), he wasn't. He wasn't really even taking a moment to rest and catch his breath, rather he was just ... seized up?
"I really should have risked taking a shot at the end there, huh?" the human squire somewhat vaguely commented at Deo'Irah, because she was there, before looking back at Jaelnec. His tone was muted, kind of exhausted.
"And, er, Jaelnec? Are you -" He didn't look alright standing there not doing anything. "Come, can you? We should probably go, do something."
Granted, Jordan didn't really know what to do with himself, either - go locate ammunition, help go through the bandits' things. Perhaps they should just ask Sir Yanin. As long as it wasn't 'pointlessly standing around'. That didn't really help anyone, least of all themselves. Or ask Irah, or Madara, or just anyone. If Sir Yanin really needed either of them, he'd probably state it.

Vela initially seemed relieved when Yanin reported that Bren was alive, only for her worry to return when Irah specified that he had been wounded and proceeded to elaborate on his current condition. The penin stopped looking at Irah pretty soon after she had described his state as “stabilized” and in “no physical danger,” and instead turned to scan the area by the farmhouse where she knew Irah, Lhirin and Freagon had been. Soon enough she started taking a step in that direction, having spotted Bren – still bloody as he was – before stopping and forcing herself to turn her attention back to Irah.
“The Crusader's Guild know better than to raid villages willy-nilly; as much as I hate the g'vassin, being that reckless would get them declared proper outlaws and they would start to find it very hard to get around Rodoria,” she said grimly and, with a final glance around to confirm that things did indeed appear to have calmed down, lowered her crossbow and started working on unloading the bolt and slackening the string. “I don't know about anyone having the Withering, but it definitely seems like getting Bren was the whole point of attacking Borstown.”
She turned to Yanin and listened as he spoke as well. Though she had notably been quite energetic during this battle it was becoming clearer with every passing second how much the strain had taken out of her, and it was getting more and more difficult for her to present herself with strength and dignity.
“As far as I know Bren isn't anyone of note outside Borstown,” she shrugged, propping her crossbow against the ground and leaning on it for support. “He grew up here with his parents, went away and studied healing in Zerul for four years and then came back here. His parents run the winery and he's a decent healer and a good man, but I don't know anything about Bren or them that would be of interest to the Guild.”
She shook her head in resignation and looked away, back toward where Madara was handling Bren. Then she turned to Quintin, who was once again wiping the blade of his sword. She gestured toward the oak. “Get those bodies down from there, would you? Carefully and respectfully, if at all possible.”
The man offered a curt nod and promptly walked off in the direction of the tree.
Heaving a sigh, Vela looked from Irah to Lhirin, then back to Yanin again. “There's a lot of work left to do cleaning up here, but I don't think right now is the time to do it. You should all finish up any business we have here and then bring Bren and our prisoners back to Borstown. I'll arrange for people – people much better equipped for the task – to come and clean up when we get back. You can go with them if you want, but I don't think that'll be necessary.” She paused, then raised her voice slightly as she told them: “Of course you are all invited to stay at Bor Manor. I would be happy to have the chance to get to know you all better... and maybe discuss some other work for talented individuals like yourselves? Oh, and of course I also still need to pay you.”

Just a short distance from there, Jaelnec traced Irah's footfalls as she approached him, just as he could see her coming closer. Even though the danger seemed to have passed, he still felt hyper-aware of every movement around him, as if he could not quite manage to settle back into a more sensible state of ordinary caution. He could feel his heart quickening the closer she got, and when she reached out to grasp his shoulder he not only involuntarily and violently recoiled, but was shocked to find that he had to stop himself from slashing her with his sword.
“I'm sorry,” he said, staring at her with wide, fearful eyes for a moment before looking down at the sword in his hand – the blade still stained with blood – and promptly letting go of it and pulling back his hand as if burned by it. “Sorry, I... I'm just... I...”
He blinked and turned to Jordan, still full of nervous energy. “Yes... Do something... I should go... do something...”
Seemingly forgetting about his weapons on the ground, Jaelnec hurried off toward the oak to help Quintin get the hanged bodies down.

Jaelnec was in shock, that much Irah was certain of. The widened eyes, the racing pulse, the white-knuckled grip on his weapon… flinching at her touch was not something she had expected, but it gave her a good measure of what had happened. Healers were often thought to mend only physical wounds, but Irah knew well that the worst wounds were those of the mind, and felt it her duty to treat those too–though the treatment was often little more than talking and time, generating a sense of safety that allowed people to confront their thoughts and feelings and move through them. Jaelnec would need time before he could talk, for the toll of taking a life was heavy indeed: even if those people were awful bigots, they were still people, and slaying them should not ever be easy on a person’s soul. She did not interrupt him at all as she fled, only turning to Jordan with a look of concern he’d almost certainly seen on his mother’s face before.

“Sweet Jaelnec… please stay by his side and keep him busy, Jordan, if Sirs Yanin and Freagon will allow it? He needs a camaraderie we cannot provide, until his mind settles. When we return to Borstown I will draw a hot bath for you; you’ve earned some rest… but for now the work is not over. The calm of succour is a harder draught to brew than battle’s heady high.” She spoke softly, with a sad smile playing at the edges of her lips and eyes full of compassion. She gave him a brief nod before looking towards the construct that held Kinder’s essence.

“Thank you, my friend. Would you take a look at the prisoners and assess who might need immediate attention? They are awful people, but… perhaps they deserve better than this. Perhaps with their compliance we may yet save more. Could you ask Caleb to rejoin us?” Irah thought, projecting out her desire to communicate with Kinder and knowing that that would be enough. It was strange, to her, to use words with her dear friend–their communion was normally one of the soul, intimate and wordless, with exchanges of thought and feeling on a level that words could only clumsily approximate. Communicating wordlessly was not quite the same, but… it was the best Irah could do, the closest she could feel to normalcy.

She then proceeded to hurry back to the main group, able to hear Vela’s words in the distance enough to have picked up the gist of the conversation if not the specifics.

“As you see fit, Lady Bor. If they know better than to raid villages ‘willy-nilly’, as you say, then there is some higher purpose at work in conjunction with the opportunism that comes naturally to bandits. Bren will elucidate us more when he wakes. As for work… Lhirin and I would not leave you to defend yourselves against the coming onslaught–this battle may be won, but the war yet looms. Denied their prize they will come back, and we will have to be ready.” Irah replied, her tone soft and determined. They could discuss the specifics back at the Manor and engage in idle chatter there–for now, little more needed to be said. The walk back through the forest would offer them ample opportunity to reflect on what had happened, and with clearer minds they could articulate themselves better. Irah had a brief moment of wondering whether she should offer her services as a necromancer to Lady Bor–getting the slain to dig their own graves was all they deserved, and it would do the living folk of Borstown good to not have to face the corpses of those who had stolen the lives of their loved ones… not to mention the fact that digging graves was difficult and laborious work, work that required food to fuel. She supposed they might well have extra food, with fewer mouths to feed, but that would be of no comfort to those who’d lost family members. Irah resolved to donate her earnings from the task to those grieving and lost if they needed it, though Vela seemed generous and compassionate enough that she would not see any of them suffer fiscally and she would not want to undermine that generosity with a reckless and unneeded gesture… nor was she in the habit of giving coin away unless it was in the service of saving lives.

She walked over to Lhirin’s side as she mused, turning her thoughts to what would happen with Caleb now that the task ahead of them was done. What he’d said to her earlier had struck her–about guile and its nature, and ultimately how silly of her it had been to try and use guile on a being whose very nature was deceit–and one despairing at the loss of his only friend, at that. She had meant everything she said, of course, but there was no way for him to know that–and even if there was, there was no way for him to trust that knowledge in the state he was in. This was certainly a mess they’d gotten themselves into… Rodoria had not been nearly this contentious the last time she was here. Perhaps that was why fate had steered her here, and saddled her with Sir Freagon as her only lead… her mind was cast back to her meeting with Mitai, and how he’d described fate. The future was shaped by their choices, and she would have to be careful to bring the future she desired into being–but for now, she had no better lead than the surly and laconic knight. Fate, it seemed, did have something of a sense of humour.

He didn't miss Jaelnec practically jumping back from Deo'Irah trying to touch him, nor the small jerk of hand that betrayed the nightwalker had to instinctively stop himself from slashing out before he haphazardly apologized. Yes. Right... Don't touch people who have just been in a fight, or attacked, at least until you're really sure that they have calmed and know you're there and not dangerous. It wasn't exactly the first time he had seen a reaction like that, mostly from the civilians who had only dealt with incidents once or twice, or never before. Old guards, adventurers and knights in active combat roles mostly drank too much. Smoked. And didn't sleep. Some snapped. Not all of them, not Vela, not Quintin ... unsure about Sir Freagon ... but a fair few.
Protecting and saving people could be a burden, definitely, but someone had to do it. One'd think that after several years, there'd be something better than 'do something else and hope it goes away'. But it had worked this far, so it, well, was good enough. Celebrate the victories, keep yourself busy. Have a pint of ale (not enough to get drunk-drunk), sing a song, train, take care of weapons and armor, brush the horses...

The younger nightwalker let go of his sword and latched onto the recommendation. The "do something else" seemed to be the rather morbid task of helping Quintin take care of the farmowners, or perhaps them and their visitors, but... Well, it needed getting done and probably anything was better than being seized up, paralyzed by the horror of it all.
Numbly, Jordan looked down to where Jaelnec had dropped his arms, only to realize that he himself still had both of his arms full, and set his spear against the wall to unload his crossbow and sling it on his back. Now he had at least one hand free to pick up the other guy's weapon. It wasn't a good sword, but unless he somehow indicated he had found another one to use, it was probably what the nightwalker was accustomed to and would probably eventually want returned.

“Sweet Jaelnec… please stay by his side and keep him busy, Jordan, if Sirs Yanin and Freagon will allow it? He needs a camaraderie we cannot provide, until his mind settles. When we return to Borstown I will draw a hot bath for you; you’ve earned some rest… but for now the work is not over. The calm of succour is a harder draught to brew than battle’s heady high.”
She was still there, too... The kind, vicious, compassionate, lithe, pretty, innocent-looking priestess with secrets she'd just barely let them get a glimpse of. Jordan didn't quite know to be around her - she seemed like a being of a too different class to be really himself around (unlike Nabi, who, despite being from some nation and kind he didn't think he had even heard of, seemed somehow more familiar, perhaps? he'll need to check on her, too), so for the most part defaulted to guardsman.
But the squire and off-duty Fadewatcher was also tired - not just physically from coming down from the battle, but mentally, too. Usually it would be some singular beast-monster or highwaymen, not three dozen people, most of whom had been cut down or slaughtered. That wasn't normal for him, either. That one final moment of indecision which might cost Bren his health - and would have cost the town healer his life if it weren't for no less than three other capable healers on their side. That didn't help, either, the whole thought of maybe things would be slightly less fucked up if he hadn't doubted himself.
Fortunately or not, he was mostly just competent enough to manage to keep things together, and just sort of manage to deal with his own things, and some of others', too. Just okay. He was doing okay.

"Yeah, yeah, I can do that," he replied, sounding perhaps slightly out of breath, perhaps almost slightly distracted, somehow, but in general, just normal. Even if he didn't necessarily expect himself to sound just like he had merely ran a couple miles or something, and nothing more significant had happened. The calm after battle when you had actually time tho think about things... Wouldn't he know it? "I'm quite certain Sir Yanin would just tell me, us if he needed us for something else. In which case, we can just do that something else. And Sir Freagon ... I wouldn't know, but Jaelnec was with our group for now, yes?" So he was probably their business until Sir Freagon said otherwise.
He sighed, picking up his own spear and straightening up, glancing to where Quintin and now Jaelnec were. "A bath sounds nice."
Back at home and among the servants, a bath would have been a large half-barrel bowl you poured a few buckets of cold well-water in, and then a couple boiling kettles to make it more amicable to touch. You couldn't really go comfortably in it unless you were a kid, and usually it ended up more lukewarm than actually hot since you had other things to do than boil water on the stove or pit fire. The actual Glades' mansion had had a true bath, and he supposed Bor Manor would, too, if Lady Bor was willing to lend it...
"We all could use some rest, and well, something not that," he lifted three of his fingers off his spear to vaguely motion towards the field, "Don't think you can really get used to it, or if you can, it's probably not a good thing." Oddly enough Sir Yanin had said something along those lines, too, even if his reaction was more along the lines of a cold 'don't like it' than any visual or behavioural indication of being actually shaken up by, well, anything.
"But, yeah, the resting will have to wait, a little. But thank you. For caring when not everyone might." At least not until they were injured enough to actually need healing immediately. A fair amount people tended to regard guards as just kind of there until they themselves acutely needed help.
He offered Deo'Irah a weary smile and, adjusting his grip on his spear, walked over to see how Jaelnec and Quintin were doing.

There would probably be a lot of equipment to clean up come next morning...



"They have been getting bolder, and defenses have been getting sparser," Yanin stated near where the others stood discussing, not really taking a break to speak while impassionately rolling over what they now knew to be one of the dead crusaders to see if this one, out of all the ones littered across the grounds, had something interesting on him. It was easier to get away with things. Easier than it had been a long time.
Lady Bor assured them she'll have someone else take care of the bodies. As long as they're trustworthy. Bury the bodies. Reuse the metal and general supplies. Burn the rest. Do not leave anything identifiable.
"Seems reasonable." She was right in one matter, at least. It wouldn't be optimal use of their time to spend the next two days digging a hole big enough to fit all these corpses. Especially when one of them - as much as there was a 'them' to speak of - was effectively dying as they spoke. Time was running out. He'd informed Kinder and Deo'Irah; if only they could stop wasting time.

"Will see," he simply responded to the Baroness' insinuation that there will be more work. He was already involved with the happenings here, and there was yet to be any guarantee going where he intended to go would end with a resolution, so they might as well listen to what the 'job' was.

When Quintin - and the squires - went to take down the bodies in the tree, Yanin briefly went over. He didn't assist, or offer to, just watched silently for a couple minutes, before returning to his perhaps equally morbid task of looking for information. Any information.

After Irah transmitted her silent message to Kinder, the Angel of Mercy awkwardly nodded her little puppet-head in acknowledgment of the requests before clumsily waddling over toward where Madara was working on treating Bren. Her movements were unsurprisingly rather slow and funny-looking, since the legs of her makeshift vessel were stiff and lacking joints, meaning that she had to wobble and rotate her entire body with each step as she traversed the area, all while wiggling her little scarecrow-like arms at her sides in an effort to maintain her balance.
“My real body can fly,” she volunteered when she got to Madara before dropping down on all fours before directing one stubby hand toward Bren. A soft white light shone from it onto Bren, and the magic of one of the most potent healers among the angelic classes promptly caused the catatonic healer's injuries to mend rapidly. “It has big, beautiful wings. It is quite graceful, I think; magnificent to look at and capable of great mobility. How other angels find any kind of pleasure in inhabiting vessels like this crude thing... it is quite beyond me.”
It was unclear whether Kinder was speaking to Madara or Bren, but her tone struck a curious middle-ground between annoyance and tenderness. “There,” she said after just several seconds, “that is as much as I can safely do for him. He is practically unhurt now, but there may be some external scarring... though if he is a healer himself, he will likely be able to fix that himself once he regains consciousness.”

Once she was sure the objective of this entire excursion was well and truly cared for as she had been instructed, Kinder turned her attention to the bandits – who she supposed were actually crusaders – and swept her divine senses across the battlefield to check how many of them, if any, could still be saved. The two that Yanin had intentionally left with wounds that were not immediately lethal were quite recoverable, of course, but the rest... None of them had been mages, as Caleb had asserted at the beginning of the endeavor, and they were all human. With the average capacity of a human soul, Kinder figured that even if they clung to life hard enough to ignore the beckoning of the Wanderer, they would still only have about thirty seconds after death before their spark of life faded and they became undead. And it had already been far more than thirty seconds; as such, it came as no surprise to her that she did not sense any lingering spirits that would allow for revival. The dead here were, regrettably, truly dead, and not even an iriao, nor the Goddess of Mercy herself for that matter, could bring back the dead.
So it was that Kinder opted to focus her attention where it would actually make a difference and headed for Yanin's prisoners. The third prisoner that Quintin had executed had been the one Kinder had the highest hopes for since he was the most recent death, but she could tell that his spirit had departed almost instantly upon death. That man had not only accepted his end, he had welcomed it. But none of that mattered; with her body of sticks and straw gradually crumbling under the corrosive influence of divine taint, Kinder did as she was told and healed the crusaders just enough that their lives were no longer in danger.

Also immediately after communing with Kinder, Irah would find that she did not even need to wait for the Angel of Mercy to convey the message, as she immediately heard Caleb's voice in her head: “No need for her to pass on a message, Deo'irah. I can hear you. Or did you forget that I was asked to maintain a telepathic link with you?” Rather than wait for her to respond, the fallen thalk just continued without pause: “I think I will stay in here for now rather than rejoin you. I am managing to accumulate a substantial amount of divine energy in this shed; it would be a shame to let all this power go to waste.”

Checking the crusaders' bodies, Yanin would find very little in terms of anything that could elucidate their motives beyond the obvious. They generally seemed to have very little in terms of personal possessions on them in a way that suggested they probably stored most of their belongings elsewhere, though Yanin would also observe that the vast majority of the band's baggage and supplies were probably in their saddlebags. A few crusaders did wear jewelry, though most of it was very sparse, simple and cheap. Several simple rings – likely wedding rings as was tradition in many of the more popular religions – of steel or wood, a couple of crude bracelets of string feathers or colorful pebbles as pendants... things that were worth very little, but one might assume had sentimental value to their owners. One crusader had a dirty and weathered ragdoll tucked into his belt, and another had a child's wooden toy sword sheathed right next to his very real dagger. The most interesting memorabilia he was able to discover without going through the saddlebags was a silver locket one crusader was wearing around his neck, which contained a tuft of blond hair.
He would naturally also find that many of the crusaders had small amounts of money hidden away on them in a way that suggested they had been trying to hide the coins from their comrades. The amounts varied per person, of course, but in total it would come to 75 rodlin. He and Lhirin would also finish their count: they had the four still-catatonic crusaders that Freagon had applied restraints to, Yanin's two prisoners, and twenty-five dead for a total of thirty-one.

Over by the tree at the place of pride of the farm, Jaelnec and Quintin relieved the poor innocent plant of its gruesome decorations and gently laid the corpses side by side at its foot, allowing them to rest with some measure of dignity until such a time that a proper burial became feasible. As it turned out, Quintin had only been partially correct in his assessment of who had been hung there. Two were indeed an adult pair of penin, a man and a woman; young, dressed in cheap, weathered garb and with what appeared to be carpenter's tools still in place in their belts. But while the last three – another pair of man and woman, and finally a boy that looked less than ten years old – could easily be assumed to be human at a glance, a closer inspection revealed that they were actually nightwalkers.

"I've only ever seen angels in imagery, never in person before today, let alone speaking with them," the half-palanter admitted, briefly withholding hersef when Kinder finished what she and Irah had started.
"Palanters, all full-bloods, at least, but most half-bloods, too, can also choose to fly - but only at the expense of the ability to birth new life and their old form, the dexterity of their hands especially, never to be able to revert back to their old life even if memories persist. Strange thought, that."
Angels didn't remember their past lives, after all. And not all appeared to have the same fondness for their full body. Caleb, in particular.
"I can only venture the guess that for many of the more gentler souls among angels, it's not about the pleasure, but the cost," Madara surmised, leaning over to brush hair from Bren's face and see if she could arrange him more comfortably until the time came to transport him off. His mind might not remember it, but joints could complain something fierce if they'd been forced into an unnatural position for too long.


There was very little.
No letters, no names, no items that were obviously taken from these people's previous targets, just small, personal things that Yanin, much like the pieces of armor they wore and the weapons they had held, futilely checked for any kind of markings or insignia. If the mismatched and patchy armour - some probably taken from non-humans of similar size and build, he suspected - wasn't enough of an indication, then these people hadn't been wealthy. A lot of seemed to have even taken the effort to specifically conceal what little coin they had on their bodies.
The knight gathered up the occasional Rodlin into a piece of fabric he had liberated, but once ascertaining none of those were engraved or otherwise distinguished, just left the rings and other jewelry and knicknacks on the bodies. Money was just money; those things were personal. Even children's toys and a silver locket that, albeit otherwise unmarked, held a lock of hair, perhaps from a lover.
He stared at it for a dozen seconds, jaw glanced, before returning the locket to the corpse and getting back up again. Even those bloody sods had definitely had family and children, at some point or even now, survived by them. They had talked about going back home, didn't they?
One could only wonder how many of these people were truly evil, and how many of them merely sought to provide for their families or had lost too much, and were now trying to find purpose and an enemy to blame. Some of them could have joined for the lust of killing or power, some of the items could be trophies of fallen victims, but not all, and most likely, not the majority. There really wasn't that much that needed to go wrong for an average person to go down a twisted path.

Not that it was of any consolation to the poor penin and nightwalkers caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or any friends and family they might have had. Senseless violence during an age of death.

Thirty-one. Thirty-two with Bren. Didn't bode well for their little group, Yanin figured as he headed back to where Vela and a couple others were.
"Caleb said there were thirty-two sapients other than us here. That leaves one crusader unaccounted for. Nabi, Caleb, Lady Bor, any ideas?" He assumed that Kinder, who had now moved closer to stop the two remaining injured crusaders from bleeding out, would simply forward it to Caleb. Quintin could have an idea, too, but he was a bit out talking distance.
Long shot, but worth a try. The last thing they needed in this bloody mess was a witness-messenger of indubitably hostile intent.

Once it was evident whether or not there was anything to do about that, he showed the tied-up cloth of Rodlin relieved from the dead to the Baroness, perhaps even just handing it over if it appeared she wanted to take it here and now.
"Naught anything on them. Just unsigned personal memoraphilia and some coins. Reckon the latter should go to the families of the fallen," he commented. Who knew whether everyone Lady Bor had at her disposal were equally honest. Seemed more reliable for the Baroness to have full control over the redistribution of the Crusaders' wealth. "Request the items not on the bodies to be brought over; maybe there's yet something indicative of their plans and deeds in there."

"And Kinder? Please do get Sir Freagon and Deo'Irah together for a talk. Now rather than later. Time is running out. I'll see that the others have something else to do."
Now was as good time as any, with few people around and not too much time lost. Withering only took about a week to kill, maybe day less, maybe day more, and for as far as he knew, Sir Freagon might have lost one of those days already.
There weren't many iriao available, and while they couldn't possibly remove the Withering completely, seemingly nothing could, not even the full gods, he had at least heard divine healing could delay it. Was it a day, a week, even two? He didn't know. The least they could do was take any time they could get, the sooner the better.
One could only imagine how much divine taint one would accumulate by trying to get a third of an entire body's worth of gray decaying mush restored to functional flesh. It wasn't illogical to conclude that one could only beat it back in its early stages so many times before the divine taint from the healing itself became lethal.
Divine taint could be devastating; Kinder's makeshift form was already beginning to visibly crumble. Caleb might yet end up needing to resummon her, preferably into something else than Deo'Irah. Couldn't have done her any favors, this day.



Quintin had been wrong. None of these three had been humans. The three he had thought were turned out to be nightwalkers, like Jaelnec and Sir Freagon were. And, from the other people talking, not too subtly from the prisoners' side, and Lhirinthyl bringing out a red tabard, he could only infer these people had been from the Crusaders' Guild. The same people who had killed Jaelnec's family fifteen years ago.
Even if these people weren't literally his kind, that could only be relatable in the worst possible way. That really was the worst thing he could have chosen to do, was it not? Or maybe not, maybe it was some kind of weird closure thing, or maybe he'd break down or swear vengeance - in a cruel twist of irony, not unlike the guy Yanin had spared and Quintin had killed, violence-begets-violence-like -, or...
Jordan had grown still with indecision, his blood running cold, looking from the dead nightwalkers to the living one. What did one say in a scenario quite like that? The other squire hadn't reacted immediately and violently, at least, but he probably still needed to do or say something other than stand there in silence like a fence post.
"Er, Jaelnec?" He asked, closely looking at the nightwalker's face. He wasn't going to repeat Irah's mistake of trying to touch him if he wasn't exactly sure there wasn't anything he could snap out of or into, even if he now had all the weapons and Jaelned just had a dagger still on him.
Or actually, maybe he did have an idea ... he knew very little abut nightwalker customs, but... But he might still need to see how the other reacted first.

“Ah, yes, I rather had forgotten…” Irah began, somewhat sheepishly, “recent events had rather overtaken me. That seems sensible to me–something has been bothering me: too many horses. I’ve not the exact numbers to hand, it looks like a proper count is being done, but it feels… off. ” Irah responded to Caleb mentally, all the while surveying everything that was going on as the two squires worked on freeing the bodies from the tree and Sir Yanin and Lhirin went about searching the bodies–and counting them, more importantly. Once they’d finished and began to head back over towards the main grouping of people, Irah moved over to join them and remembered upon having Sirs Yanin and Freagon in her line of sight together that the former had wanted her to speak to the latter about something with some urgency–a thought that she kept at the forefront of her mind as she went about her other bits of business. Yanin came back and announced for everyone the exact disparity in numbers, which Irah relayed to Caleb through their telepathic link.

“Hm, one left. With all that accumulated power I’m sure you could make a fairly convincing illusion that all is well here, and perhaps glean some information should they return? I’m afraid I have far less creativity with your power than you, but you seemed to produce a good quality of illusion earlier.” Irah spoke mentally to Caleb as she did, then turned her attention to Sir Freagon once more and walked over, beckoning what was left of Kinder’s vessel too.

“Sir Yanin thought there was something urgent we should discuss…” she began, expectantly waiting for Freagon to continue the conversation. She could guess that it was some sort of medical issue, by how insistent Yanin had been that it be one of the healers and the Iriao specifically, but the specifics seemed to elude her somewhat. Yanin had mentioned that time was running out, so it was something of an emergency, and there were very few things Irah could think of that would require immediate attention and not be very obvious… chief among them one of the reasons she’d taken this trip to Rodoria in the first place: the Withering.

She earnestly hoped it wasn’t so, though he’d been wise to keep it quiet if it was the case. As best as the pair had been able to tell dealing with the infected on their travels here from Kirkin there was no obvious method of transmission, and none of the data she’d gathered even began to point towards any sort of pattern. Every healer and favoured one of Reina she’d spoken to along the way had offered something similar: nothing could be done, and exceedingly little could be learned about it. Kinder had concluded that it was extremely resistant to any form of magical healing or alteration of any kind, which left Irah rather stumped about it. Some mechanisms of infection were quite obvious: plenty of diseases travelled through water, or through exposure to an infected person in some capacity, and there were theories about miasma–bad air–or some other intermediary between infector and infectee… and the Withering seemed to defy explanation on every count. She did not believe someone having the Withering posed that much of a danger to anyone else, given how random it was, but that was a particularly enlightened view few others would share… and the fact that she’d exposed her raw soul to him earlier suddenly sent something of a shudder through her feathers and her spine. She bristled for a moment and ran her hands through the feathers at the back of her head, letting out a heavy sigh, and waited for Freagon’s reply. There was no use fretting if it was something else, after all.

“I do not sense any sapients nearby besides the ones who arrived here with you and your prisoners,” Kinder was the first to reply to Yanin's query of suggestions concerning the one potential crusader that seemed unaccounted for. “Caleb also confirms that he does not sense anyone nearby within sensory range. This could mean that the last sapient has died and not been found, or that they left.”
“I'm guessing the latter,” Vela sighed, idly tapping the fingers of her left hand on the back of her right hand, producing a faint clicking noise from the gentle impact of exoskeleton on exoskeleton. Her eyes lowered and half-closed as she shook her head in resignation. “bhûhl it, we should have expected someone might get away when we all attacked from the same direction rather than surround them... but we didn't have the manpower for that either. Nothing that can be done about it now, the little g'vassi will be long gone by the time we find his trail.”
“It could be someone unaffiliated with the rest,” Kinder pointed out hopefully. “Like a second prisoner that got away during the confusion. We do not know that the missing sapient was one of the crusaders.”
The baroness scoffed. “As if we'd be that lucky. I admire your optimism, angel, but I'm sure this just means we let a child-murderer get away unscathed.”

“I'll see to that it's done,” Vela acknowledged Yanin's recommendation that the coins looted off the dead crusaders be distributed to the families of the crusaders' victims. She offered him a small smile and a nod of respect, clearly impressed by the gesture.

“Not in a way that would be practically useful,” Caleb telepathically responded to Irah's question. “You are right that I could theoretically create an illusion such as you describe, but this would be on a whole other scale than the one back then. It would require a tremendous amount of energy to create, and more energy to sustain than I could siphon even if I were to stay here.”


Over under the tree with the now-retrieved bodies arranged neatly beside it, Jaelnec had taken to simply standing there, staring blankly at the body of the young nightwalker boy, his expression inscrutable. This was not his first time seeing something like this, nor was it the worst he had been exposed to. Not only had he witnessed gruesome things while traveling as Freagon's page, including dead children in various stages of decay or having been partially consumed by some vile beast, but... yes, as Jordan surmised unbeknownst to him, something like this did indeed evoke his own origins. He looked at the boy, someone he had never met before and had no connection to past the fact that they belonged to the same species, and his brain “helpfully” and unbidden recalled the scene when he had discovered his family fifteen years ago. His parents. His younger sister. The blood. The flames. The sword.
It was difficult to sufficiently put what he was feeling into words, but what came to mind for him was “empty” or “hollow.” It was not that he was feeling nothing, but that he felt as though everything that had filled him prior seemed to drain away and leave him feeling cold and heavy inside.
He only tore his attnetion away from the boy when Jordan addressed him, which made his eyes widen with a start, as though he had been jolted awake. For a moment he just looked surprised, but then he donned a small, mirthless smile as he averted his gaze from Jordan and the corpses alike. “I'm okay,” he lied in the grand scheme of things, but not intentionally so; he was just referencing a more specific circumstance rather than his general state of being. “I think I've calmed down a bit. Thank you.”
Looking down, Jaelnec noticed the sword in Jordan's hand, which prompted him to first check the scabbard on his hip and then glance back to where he had dropped it earlier and visually confirm that it was missing from both. He went to retrieve it with a sheepish smile.


“Hm? Urgent?” Freagon grumbled when Irah and Kinder approached him, turning his lone eye on them with disinterest. “Yes, I suppose I did tell Sir Yanin that I'd let you waste your time.” He looked around to check that no one else were within earshot before continuing: “I bear the mark of the Withering.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Kinder immediately started doting, waddling closer and reaching out one crumbling doll-arm. “You must –”
“Save it,” the knight sighed impatiently, dismissing the affectionate Angel of Mercy with a wave of his hand. He turned his attention back to Irah. “What I didn't tell Sir Yanin is that I've had the mark for over a week already, and as you can see I'm still here. So I'm not really as worried as him. I'm guessing it has to do with my soul not being what you'd call 'normal', but it seems it's not killing me as fast as it does other people. And even if it does...” He shrugged. “I've died before. But if you and the scarecrow think you can do anything, feel free to try. It's not as though you can make it much worse.”