Vardille was lying on his stomach, peeking over the little rocks he was hiding behind. He found a higher spot, a steep slope of which the other side was a nearly straight line of smooth rock. Few demons patrolled there, and even they were not in the immediate vicinity of the little hill.

Alas, the view a couple dozen feet below froze Vardille’s blood over.

Hundreds of horrors crawled across the ravine. Bonfires as tall as huts stood in inordinate dishevelment, suffusing the place with an unearthly crimson glow. Red-armoured soldiers stood by the fires, motionless, more than what Vardille could count. Among them, all over the place, the most repulsive creations Vardille had ever seen: nearly ten-feet tall, naked, pale, long-limbed humans with deformed faces similar to that of a rat, their skin shiny; monsters best described as a mix of a horse and a toad; uncanny, giant boars, walking on two, resembling humane features, four arms by their sides; snakes, long as rivers and wide as a cow, coiled in tranquil silence, danger visible in their motionlessness; and dragons. Wretched lizards with tattered wings, gaping holes of rot dappling their bodies.

The ravine echoed with the screeches and hisses of those filth.

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Vardille had never been to the Brimlands. If the stories were true, the behemoths there were the gravest errors of the Gods.

He found it hard to believe. He could not imagine a creature more hideous than the ones he had just witnessed.

He looked for Bryne. He needed to get the King out of that hellhole.

Bryne stood at the centre, surrounded by four red-clad demon. The king seemed calm, did not even stir. Before him, close to the rock wall upon which Vardille was spying, a short woman stood in a filthy white dress. Vardille could only make out her profile; and even that proved enough not to look at her again.

The woman was rotting. As though someone who had scraped her way out from a grave six feet deep. Her hair was grey as iron, thin and sparse, veiling her head like spider web; her features in various states of decay, her skin an alloy of sick green and musty brown, a gaping hole revealing her cheekbone and the inside of her mouth. It was unclear whether she talked to Bryne, but the king occasionally bowed her head, eyes glowing as they used to whenever he was in contact with the faelin.

Vardille smothered a resigned sigh. He must not give in.

He began to assess the demons’ position and thought of a way how he could deploy his shadows the best.