Vorshan takes his men on a slightly different backtrack route in an attempt to flank his pursuers and execute a surprise attack, after scouting what he’s up against, naturally. In the late morning as they follow a small stream, they come across a small village that they were unaware of. His men know the orders he gave yesterday, that there is to be no more purifying… for now. Although he gave the order himself, he finds it difficult to ignore the village and its people. It’s a typical village of the region, mostly round huts built right into the sides of gigantic jungle trees with some structures built on the ground for additional dwellings, shelters for livestock or for religious ceremonies and whatnot. Within crudely built fenced-in areas are some of the villagers tending the local crops of the region.

As with all Samiran tribal peoples, they have fair skin with brown to darker shades of hair colors, often worn long in braids with beads woven in, wearing simple clothing and sarongs that barely cover them. Usually they have body paint to decorate themselves, and upon adulthood they get tattoos of geometric patterns and sometimes animal designs. These stylistic and aesthetic elements can vary greatly and can be distinctive based on local and regional cultures.

Most of the “civilized” world considers Samira to be a primitive and savage land filled with backwards tribal communities. This particular village employs liberal use of cobalt blues in their personal decorum and any blue bird feathers that share that hue, or anything close to it; the women favor shaving one side of their head, and the men usually tie their long braids back into a ponytail.

A child calls out that riders approach. Word of the Purifiers ethnic cleansing campaigns have spread all across the region, and a local woman nearby immediately stops what she is doing, takes a moment to look them over, the realization upon who these riders are shows on her face, it’s the look of terror. She screams, telling the children to run into the forest, scatter and hide. Other women scream and yell and tell their young children to hide as well or if the children are too young, they try to hold them close to protect them.

A moment later, a local headstrong young man grabs his bow and fires an arrow at the riders, the arrow misses its target but drills into the neck of Vorshan’s horse. The horse bucks, thus unceremoniously throwing the rider to the hard clay ground of the crude, damp trail.

Vorshan rises to his feet, mud covers half his face, with the look of pure hate in his eyes as his mount falls over from being mortally wounded. He yells to his men as he draws his sword from the scabbard, “I know my orders, but today we will make an exception!”

Not far away and not too many minutes later, Koronos is on the trail, Shelove hears something and shares it with him through their connection. He raises his hand to single his group to stop.

Skullcrusher asks him in a near whisper, “What is it?”

“Shelove heard a scream in the distance, she believes it was a human female,” Koronos says quietly.

They all hold their mounts still and listen intently. Another scream comes, echoing through the dense jungle; and this time they all hear it, but it’s Hybornyesis, the bow master that says, “Yes, it came from the south, not far,” as he points to the direction.

“And I smell smoke,” states Corvannafax, she has a keen sense of smell. Then they all smell it and nod as they look at one another.

“Where there’s smoke…” Koronos mutters to himself.

Through the Bond, Shelove responds to him, “yes, there’s fire… you know I hate smoke and fire. Every part of me wants to run in the opposite direction, but I’ll try to go with you, but I don’t know how much I can take if it gets bad.”

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He reaches over to pet her and says, “just stay by my side as long as you can, I’ll understand if the smoke and fire becomes too much to bear.” He knows that her acute senses makes the presence of too much smoke unbearable, and her wild nature makes her naturally fear fire, as all things in the wild do.

As they approach where the screams and smoke are emanating from, they can hear more screaming and yelling, there’s much more smoke from the burning village trees and huts, it’s a raging inferno as ashes and glowing embers drift and blow past.

One of the Purifiers are close enough for the group to see through the smoke and fire, he’s dragging a young mother by her hair away from a burning structure to dispatch her away from the intense heat, she’s still clutching her baby as the man raises his sword, preparing to hack through both mother and child. Hybornyesis pulls from his quiver and and notches an arrow on the right side of the bow, he moves so fast that it’s hard to understand what is occuring, and without hesitation he lets fly with perfect accuracy; the arrow imbeds into the base of the skull of the zealot, thus severing his spinal cord, it’s a mortal injury causing instant paralysis, and even before he hits the ground another arrow is fired that drills into his temple. It’s true that the second arrow was probably unnecessary but was ultimately satisfying to behold for Koronos and his cohorts after weeks of witnessing the aftermath of the zealots' wake of carnage, senseless murder and destruction.

“By the gods, now that’s what I’m talking about!” says Pericles emphatically.

Skullcrusher has grown impatient and furious, and he greatly desires to inflict maximum damage and pain upon the zealots, so he has already gone further into the smoke-ridden, burning carnage, out of view of the others. He knows this is wrong, Corvannafax will be furious because he should be by Koronos to protect him, but he wants vengeance so badly that he can no longer think rationally. This is where he finds two zealots assisting Vorshan who is stabbing a young woman in her belly as she screams. So he jumps off his mount and grabs one of the zealot henchman by the neck, lifts him off the ground and drives his head down onto a wooden animal pen post, he drives the zealot’s head down so hard that the dull wooden stake bursts out of the middle of the man’s face and that’s where he is left to die, with his head halfway down a wooden post.

He wastes not a moment, draws his sword while ducking a wild swing from the other henchman, then he crashes his sword down on the zealot’s head, splattering blood, cleaving it into two halves all the way down to his mid-chest. That’s when he feels a slash of a blade cut deep into his shoulder, it’s not a mortal wound, but it hurts. The slash was delivered by Vorshan, he moves so fast that Skullcrusher can hardly believe it, he might be the quickest man he’s ever seen.

Vorshan deftly disarms him with amazing swordsmanship skills. Even still, Skullcrusher manages to grab him, just as the assassin's blade slices into his face, still not a mortal wound though, but it hurts a lot, so he throws the zealot with all his might. Vorshan crashes through the wooden animal pen fencing and through the mud and animal dug, knocking the wind out of him.

However, the breeze shifts and blows thick, heavy smoke into Skullcrusher’s area, making him cough and lose sight of the assassin as he runs off into the burning village, like a coward. What Skullcrusher doesn’t realize is that he himself is already a dead man. The two cuts he received, that aren’t mortal wounds normally, begin to burn like fire, even though he is nowhere near the flames, nor have any flames touched him. Voshan’s short swords are laced with a deadly poison.

Meanwhile, Koronos and his bodyguards are fighting a group of zealots, as Koronos breaks the back of zealot over his knee, he sees Skullcrusher stumbling out of the smoke, then the large bodyguard falls over with all color draining from his skin and face, but his veins and lips are turning black, the two cuts also turn black as he gasps with short breaths. “No,” is all Koronos says as he runs over to his fallen ally and friend, he kneels down beside him.

Not giving themselves the emotional space to process their fallen comrade, as much as they would like to, because even though Corvannafax was their unofficial leader, Skullcrusher was the heart and soul of the team, however, the three remaining bodyguards form a perimeter behind Koronos. They have a job to do, and they aren’t sure if they can keep Koronos safe with one man down, especially in this situation, so therefore, they will grieve for Skullcrusher later, at a more fortuitous location and occasion.

“His blades… poison. I’m, I’m sorry, my liege,” Skullcrusher says while gasping for air in a weak voice, then he dies right then and there, as breath leaves his body, and all life leaves his eyes.

Although Koronos has seen many men fall in battle, this particular one pains him the most.