After six grueling days of travel on soggy, muddy ground, Koronos and his group finally clear the miserable, sweltering swamp without any further serious event of note, aside from the Dog Spider that Corvannafax killed while she was on night watch; it tried to wander into the camp. She doesn’t like killing critters that she doesn’t eat, so she tried to chase it off, but about an hour later, it wandered too close to camp again, so she cut it in half with her sword. She was so silent that the group never knew what had occurred; except for Koronos, he looked up from his hammock when the sword blade hacked through the exoskeleton of the critter, he took a quick survey of the severed spider body twitching on the ground, then went back to sleep unconcerned.
Before their guide heads back home, he is provided with their last remaining pack horse for services rendered, as was the deal they made at the beginning. Without a pack horse to carry the supplies, they have to divide up the gear and provisions amongst themselves to evenly share the load, however, there’s still too much to carry, so they give the remainder to the guide, asking that he share it with the injured guide, the one that had to turn back early.
It takes two more days to find a burned-out village and the associated murdered bodies of its denizens, thus indicating they have found the trail of the zealots once again. As the sun begins to set and twilight encroaches, Pericles speaks, it should be noted that he rarely speaks, however, he speaks now, in his peculiar western foothills accent as he surveys all the carnage and the senseless murders committed, “I’ve had about enough of these foul fanatics, Purifiers, pfft… The only ones that need ‘purified’ are them, all of them forsaken bastards.”
Koronos simply nods in agreement to this sentiment, with Shelove at his side, he then compels his horse forward to find a suitable spot to camp before the evening advances into total darkness; one-by-one, the others solemnly fall-in behind him while his sharp eyes constantly scan the ground, looking for any signs that his quarry may have deviated from their trajectory and direction of travel.
In the darkness of the early night, while exotic jungle creatures make haunting calls that echo through the vast, dark forest, not much more than a day ahead of the Kazarian’s party, the Purifier zealots are eating some type of greasy, chewy, stringy meat while huddling around campfires. It’s a type of large jungle rodent that is best prepared by boiling it for a few hours before cooking it over a flame, this is to make it more tender and edible, however, they have no large boiling pots, so they skipped the first part and went straight to cooking it on the open flames. They were fortunate enough to kill several and this worked out nicely because the group is too big for everyone to huddle around a single campfire, and besides, a fire so big would require too much wood and draw far too much attention, so they are split up into three groups, all close to one another in a small clearing near the trunk of an insanely gigantic tree.
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Although witches have been gone for thousands of years from these lands, their ancient blood still flows in the veins of some. Sometimes this blood is potent enough to offer a glimpse or hint of a power from a bygone age. Zeyzey has this ancient blood, it gives her an intuition that can sometimes transcend the world of the seen and heard, and it’s the direct result of this fickle ability that has enabled her to gain such a high standing in the Purifiers’ ranks. She’s had a growing feeling for many days that something isn’t right, a feeling of impending disaster, and it’s behind them somewhere; so now she speaks of it as she stares unblinking into the enthralling, dancing flames of the campfire, “Vorshan, someone or something is following us, I can’t be certain, but you know I’m usually right about such things, I have waited until now to speak of it because I wanted to sort out and separate my feelings of anxiety and fear with that of the… Touched abilities.”
Up until that moment, Vorshan was also staring into the fire, but now his eyes snap up to meet hers and he slowly wipes the grease from the meat he was eating from his lips. She waits a few moments for Vorshan to reply, but he says nothing, he only looks at her with a stone-like, unmoving face; well, at least it looks that way to most people, but Zeyzey has known him for a long time and knows his tells, none of the others can see it, but she can see his masked concern.
Moments pass in tense silence because all the men have stopped talking and are now looking at her, Vorshan still doesn’t reply, so she continues, “Whatever it is, it’s dangerous. If you find it acceptable, come first light, I’ll take a few men and double back to scout.”
“No, I shall do it, we are splitting up at dawn. Take three men and the sword, push hard, day and night and only rest when the horses need to, get the weapon to TFR, stop at nothing. No more Purifying villages: they are insignificant worms.” says Vorshan in a calm but stern voice, a voice with absolute conviction and belief in his cause. Sometimes they use ‘TFR’ for conversational shorthand for The First Reborn, and this was one such incident. Although he presumes that Koronos died from the crucifixion, the Kazarian’s cohorts, however, are known to be skilled warriors and very dangerous, they will no doubt be seeking to avenge their liege, so therefore, he can ill afford to take any chances.
Zeyzey has no problem with this order because she thought they were wasting too much time from Purifying these peasants that are beneath contempt anyway, it was only slowing them down on their primary mission. Therefore, she simply says, “Understood, I will not fail.”
Most of the group of zealots get very little sleep from anxiety over the unknown; are the Kazarian’s cohorts as fearsome as their reputation? How many men are in the avenging war party? Are they all going to die tomorrow? Many questions run through their minds with no answers.
Come early morning, as the grey dawn pushes away the black ink of night, Vorshan hands Zeyzey the Sword of the First as she sits mounted atop her horse, the only words spoken are when she says to him, “kill them all… if there be killing to be done,” as she slings the ancient weapon over her back. He says nothing. Once again, his stone-like face reveals nothing, except to her, she sees it, heavily masked fear. She decides it would be best to say nothing more, and then she rides off with the three men in tow, doing as she was ordered.