[Tariel POV]

The blood witch’s words continued to echo around Tariel’s mind as their little group of four clambered back onto Dantlar’s back. The steady Earthspeaker didn’t say anything, and Tariel was grateful to him for it. With her sooth-sight, Tariel’s mind, already exhausted from his constant windwords and Callings, had begun pounding like a drum in his skull, the sound making his vision flash with every one of his heartbeats. The agony of his life centered him, and breath after breath, he gathered his wits enough to regain a full consciousness regarding his surroundings.

“Gran Verat, forgive us.” Tariel quietly mumbled to himself, losing the last semblance of his carefully constructed calm as he tallied the losses for this stupid jaunt. One civilian dead, three dozen of the sentinels at the Samutelia sacrificed, and TWO High Speakers dead (one of them the Lieutenant Colonel, no less!) with another probably permanently crippled. For just a thousand dead keelish? The calculus of war was cruel and implacable at the best of times, but this was an embarrassment to the Thnufir fort. A squad of their greatest elites couldn’t exterminate a single swarm? And had sustained casualties? Even a single dead High Speaker was worth more than three thousand dead keelish, and this–

“Why are you letting them send us away? We need to slaughter them! We can’t let a single one survive! Let me kill them!”

The moron of a civilian was running her mouth again. She had generally grown on him over their weeks of travel together, her constant curiosity and cute smile had been a welcome addition to their squad. But she didn’t know anything about the real world. “Shut up.” He hissed, and Varali fell silent, her shoulders rocking back as if she’d been struck with a physical blow.

“Your mom and dad died. That sucks. Seeing their bodies on your family’s table was traumatic, and I get it. I’ve seen dead family members, and it’s never easy. But if you say another word, I’ll throw you to the Nar’dul before I carry you back to the shore, much less escort you beyond that.”

She began to exhale, to respond somehow, but she quickly realized that he meant any other word. With a terse nod, Varali fell silent and stiff, every inch of her radiating rage and confusion and whatever other amalgamation of emotions that teenage girls tended to feel was currently consuming her. Tariel didn’t answer her unasked questions, Norat was still in shock at losing her hands and wife in one swift, cruel bite, and Dantlar remained as staunch and quiet as ever.

The Samutelia, at this opportune, slow crossing, was over a mile wide, and though the silence weighed on Tariel as they went, he held his tongue. The need to apologize continued to swell inside him until he sighed. “Varali.” She looked at him, her posture tense as she didn’t verbally answer. “What do you know about the Moonchildren?”

She shrugged, the movement so slight he nearly missed it. “You can talk to me. I’m not quite so angry, and I’m trying to answer some questions for you.”

“Not much. They’re barbarians, work with the Sunkindred. Drink blood and sacrifice babies. Eat anybody they kill. They aren’t people, since they don’t have magic.” In her heated frustration, Varali pulled the beralt from her face, the sweat coating her face and dripping freely to the waters below.

“Eh. Mostly correct, I suppose. They don’t sacrifice babies, and they don’t eat everything they kill, but they do make sure to ‘partake of the life’ of anything that meets its end at their hands. What do you know about their Words of Power?”

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“Like all non-humans, their Words change their bodies. They can’t Speak like we do.”

“So, not much.” He rubbed at his face, the crusting blood from his nostrils flaking away as he scratched. “So far as our Soulspeakers have been able to glean, they have six Phrases, always spoken in order. No clue what they are specifically, but they go from the thumbs, to the index, then the middle, fourth, then fifth fingers. The final Phrase completes their Words, and it changes their eyes. They can see into people, into hearts, into the future.”

“And that’s why that Bloodpriestess talked about the Thnufir and your sister.”

Tariel stiffened at the mention of Djallma, but forced himself to answer, “Yeah. In those seconds, she learned that much. Maybe could have learned more, but I was lucky. Dantlar pulled me out of her grasp pretty quick.” Tariel patted the shoulder of his companion as best as he could through the shifting stone armor and the stone patted his fingers back.

“That’s freaky. No wonder they’re all barbarians if they can’t use magic and have to stare at each other like that.” Varali shivered before continuing, “But why didn’t we just kill them all? They don’t have any magic, and we could just slaughter them all.”

“You’ve never fought any of the barbarians from the Wilds. The Sunkindred are huge, furry, muscular, and nearly animals themselves. They–” Tariel pulled himself from thinking about anything other than what they had seen. “That’s not important. Had you heard of the keelish talking before this?”

“Nobody has been able to see them and survive to tell of it.” She didn’t hide her bitterness. “Except for me, I guess.”

Tariel felt a shiver run down his spine as he remembered the speaking monster. It was huge, taller than any human he’d ever seen, and its body rippled with muscle. He’d seen the exhausted, the desperate, and the fighting keelish these last days, but something about seeing it deliberately speak, to deceive. With a turn of his head, Tariel spat into the river, hoping to expel the impurity that even being near the monster could have corrupted him with.

“Seeing that, just now… really made me understand why the Gran Verat has commanded us to kill them all.”

“You ‘understand’ that, but you bowed to the barbarians. Coward.” Norat mocked him, her eyes dead as she looked at the approaching shore. Her wife’s body had been largely shredded in the jaws of the Nardul after she’d been overwhelmed and murdered by the keelish, but Norat had been able to drag a part of her wife’s body free before throwing it towards Doluk.

On Doluk’s back stood a hunched Leialt Alniyh, looking at something. He’d decided to stay back after Doluk refused to continue, and Tariel couldn’t hold back the vitriol. “Weak-willed bastard! Couldn't be arsed to put a little bit of effort into our Gran-Verat-given job?”

The arrogant High Lord didn’t pay him any attention. The rage surged in Tariel, and with a wind-assisted jump, he landed near the crest of Doluk’s shell, beside Leialt, who hunched over a bloodied mass of a keelish’s body. “Why didn’t you and Doluk follow? We could have killed them all if you had!” Immediately, he was shouting.

“Doluk is afraid of water, he could only pass through the marshes when supported by that fool Lierthan. Instead of pushing us all forward to catch and kill all the keelish, though, he descended to wage individual battle with the scaled menace. Bah. Though he was blessed with power, there wasn’t much brains to go with it.”

Shimmering sparks of lightning flickered into being around Tariel as he felt his temper flare up. As he began to contemplate how best to slap Alniyh, though, his Skyr crawled out of Alniyh’s collar and ate the sparks. “Don’t be stupid. You’ll get yourself killed. Wouldn’t want another Salma in your family, would you?”

He couldn’t deal with the self-important bastard any longer. Tariel whirled around and stalked as far away as he could manage while remaining on Doluk’s shell. Behind him, he heard Varali’s curious question, and he listened in, curious about what the answer would be.

“And what exactly is all this?”

“Discovery, and experimentation.” High Lord Alniyh responded, his eyes feverish and focused, a manic energy beginning to sweep him up. “The next step to take.”