…..:::::|. Clouds Forest .|:::::…..

“Help me!” The little child cried dropping to the ground. “They're after me!”

Only Percival's hand stopped what was to be Siin's rush to aid the small thing.

She was blackened with soot and ash over the whole of her dark skin. Her bright yellow eyes, bloodshot and glassed over with tears. All she bore on her back was a black scroll case slung with leather.

“She looks strange. Kill her.” Kodlaa instantly hated this scene and unsheathed her daggers.

The tiny shivering girl started to cry.

“No, wait. Don't sob. Who's after you?” Siin broke from Percival to stoop near the girl. Her palms were like ice.

“I've no freedom. I crave...”

“Percival, she's a slave.” Siin knelt, shivering in some old memories of his own.

“No.” Percival's skin felt strange and familiar at the same time. “Step away, Siin.”

“She smells of a foul odor.” Veygornne huffed.

“She's dead.” Halycind added, all too familiar with the scent.

“And walking?” Kodlaa exclaimed.

“I only know of one that commands the dead.” Lucian added moving ever so slowly to her flank.

The girl sobbed buckets into her hands as Siin held them.

“Who commands you?” Percival demanded.

The girl snatched a suddenly calm glare to the Exemplariat. Siin scuttled backward as this was too sudden a change of emotions to have been normal. “Gods.” Her head tilted sharply. “Who commands you?”

“Kill it!” Kodlaa shouted over and over.

“She's only ill with magery!” Siin yelped.

“If she were enthralled, your blade is the only freedom that would ash her.” Percival warned.

“Aw, if a wolf starts having sudden seizures, the rest of the pack turns on it and rips it to shreds no matter what the intent.” She was staring into Siin and he seemed as if he would burst into tears. “Should the same be said for the animal called man? Is it not he who decides with all his reasonings to determine if the sick should live or die?”

Siin's head wavered and he seemed to be breathing deeper than his lungs could draw. With her ashed over dark skin and yellow eyes she was still able to spew philosophical utterances that roved the minds of those sensitive to this kind of sway. The amber in Siin's eyes began to grow brighter.

“Don't listen, aBn. Ash her.”

The fox-women came running down a slope into the scene with a seizing choke about the little girl’s body. Siin broke from her sway and stumbled back into Halycind's hold. One of the fox-women was choking the child to her chest. “You've been followed, Gems.”

“By whom—“ Lucian gave a solid think. “The Enchantress. That perfectly wretched cull! So I was to be the catalyst for this plot?!”

“Correct. We now surmise she reports to the Seer. Hence our own follow of you here.”

The forest started to feel chokingly different and Halycind, all this time unable to lose that overwhelming sense of dread, drew her sword.

“And the Seer reports to the giihalahtent Death Engineer. Who has a nasty habit of getting the Lorde of Shadows to command her vessels.” Percival stared and pointed at the cold scraggly thing in the scout’s arms; having drawn all the conclusions he needed to sort out why this dead vessel was even here before them.

“But why would the Enchantress show her hand now?” Veygornne asked.

“Because it doesn't matter if we know. Were are to be struck from the living!” Lucian concluded.

“So this is to be an ambush then?” Halycind asked steadying Siin to his feet as four large black figures huffed out of the mists that had obscured them.

“No.” The four massively bestial voices uttered from the mists. “A convenient arrangement...as we were just about to deliver the girl to the Death Engineer.” Their dark concert uttered.

“What are they?” Kodlaa asked.

“Blackgale.” Percival answered in almost a whisper.

“What is that?” Halycind asked.

“You know them as Grec-beasts.”

“Nono.” Kodlaa began a panic. “Nonono.” She huffed as she caught the eye of her pack-sister.

Grec-beasts were horrid creatures; nasty, relentless, brooding hulks of pure black charging muscle. They were the only beasts Ashok's Weroances ever feared to hunt. It was a great relief their numbers had always been few.

The girl, Siin still stared at, wheezed in the arms of her Dead Rank captor, “You should run now.” In a great concussive boom emanating from her, the dedin scout holding the girl was blown backward into the mists and the child dropped to run towards the lot currently taking stance within the trees to formulate some sort of tactic.

Voices, a chorus of voices encircled their positions. “You hinder the movement of Her Regency the Death Engineer. I have gifts for her. She claims triumph in this gestalt of blood and darkness.” Their voices were heavy to the ears.

“It can speak?” Siin was drunk with the weight of Power in the air and had finally awoke a bit to the goings on around him.

“Yes, they can all speak. Don't listen.” Percival instructed.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Siin tried to steel himself at his Exemplariat's words.

At Percival's signal, they all burst to a run in separate directions to purposefully split what was surely about to be a mass killing of Agency companions. Booted feet stomped the moist forest floor in somewhat calculated runs in cross-cross with one another to both confuse and herd the creatures.

Bursts of blue lit up like frosty globes behind thick arms of mists. Siin was tossing forceful magecraft to the huge black bodies of the constantly whispering Blackgales. In his heated herding he managed to take away the footing of one while Percival drew up his own craft on another to defensively shield from the beasts.

But it was Halycind and Veygornne who drew the first blood. Veygornne sliced at the furry and scaly knees of one with his crimson blade, then it and he tumbled down the slight decline. Halycind burst to chase downhill and saw that the black scroll case, the girl was slung with, had been ripped from her in the rush of herding. Halycind, looking to stay on Veygornne's close follow, scrambled to pick up all the scrolls strewn about but in her haste her eyes caught the most curious collection of words.

Scent of dying roses. Her literacy boosted by curiosity made her eyes keep going. He is defiant and his impudence hinders their gain. He enthralls no one, as was the urge of his ‘brothers’ in their youth. He will slay no children, as was Gwynerh's orders upon conscription. He only holds the Reforging over her head and the Death Engineer is perpetually vexed at his words. He does this to her to humble her. I know this now, as I have seen Daemphred falter from within. They are not whole. They do not function as the gestalt she wanted.

The mists damnably obscured the fighting. Lucian, who was seconded by Percival now, swung a very long blade—longer than seemingly necessary—to the black hide of one of the gales in chase. Percival shot shards of glass into the fresh wound with a giant sweeping motion and the thing lost its right front leg. As it tumbled like a boulder to the ground, the whispers surrounding them roared louder.

The two men ducked to the trees close-by.

“It mentioned some triumph in the gestalt of blood, and what's that about the Death Engineer?”

“I believe they’re referring to the Most-Feared having done the bidding of the Death Engineer.”

“What are these titles you keep blasting about?!” Kodlaa whispered angrily as she and Siin ranked up in grateful coincidence with their betters.

“The only names and functions we know these Powers by. Each one rules over a segment of life. But they all seem to hate it.”

“So the crypt-kid is buffed by some strange 'robes'? What are we fighting here?”

“Whatever turned those rings around.” Siin summed still eyeballing Percival's wrist.

Even as they hid, the curious looking child started a cursing yell; looking for her pursuers to show themselves. The more important of her words were echoed in triplicate by the Blackgales surrounding them lost in mists.

Halycind, startled by the screams scooted her frightened body up against a tree's trunk. She took another look at the scrolls perhaps in search of an answer to this ambush?

Today marks the tenth cycle of my devotion and I am glad to bleed, for I know to whom I will belong. He who is sweet in his craft and cruel in his education.

“Essoc Rajoul will not be pleased you thwart the movement of his children!” The crying girl screamed.

“What children?” Kodlaa shuddered.

“The gales...” Percival said impatiently. “All the Grec-beasts were borne of one. A fouled Daemphred experiment performed on another of their useless number, Essoc.”

“But we use Essoc...on our skin...to guard against scratches.” Siin said with a strange slow expectancy.

“It is from...the extraction of dying Blackgales.”

“I see why you don't tell people that.” Kodlaa scowled.

“So they can be killed.” Siin drew confidence in one smooth breath and readied himself.

“We have you, little creatures.” The little girl and all the Blackgales taunted.

“I'm going to get her. They'll follow. You herd them.”

Before the rest could stop him, Siin was off having scooped up the little girl into a running cradle.

Halycind could not stop her eyes from dragging themselves across such curious words.

I bow to him and to none of his bloodhood for they wreck us with their hatred of us and rend our skin from bone. I want their bones, their wicked Immortal bones. Vyrok ev Aras. To the lot of Daemphred. To the lot of those that haunt him with fiery words of reproof. He is wicked too, do they not know? Do they not know he commands the dead? My sweet Lorde who's face I have never seen, whose craft I crave, whose commands I long for. The father of neutrality...is the goal of my mortal life.

She stopped herself, hugging the words to her chest. She took a frightened gulp as she stuff the scrolls and case away into her armours. The ground rumbled heavy under her crouched backside and the wolf in her blood burst to a run.

So many more questions rose. Was this a journal? Of a servant or some sort of page? Why would this little girl have these parchments? And where was she going with them? As she had read, what were her warming smiles toward her best friend the battlemage became a pale reflection to the confusion rising from her curiosities of this mancer. She heard a voice in her memory again. The dead are everywhere.

She, suddenly paying full attention to the reality of what that meant in the moment, realized she'd run much farther into the woods than she’d thought. There were little fox statuettes dotting a sloping path up the hill toward standing stones and small built structures. A burial ground, she surmised. She looked around herself and tried to haunt her pack-sister but nothing returned to her in thought. Her breathing increased, knowing now, she was lost.

Veygornne found Siin first and shoved a crimson blade toward both the battlemage and the ashed over thing he cradled.

Holding them at bay, Veygornne yelled. “Who's your paedron, thrall? Gwynerh?”

Ruddy blue skin vibrated with the swell of craft and without planning or thinking, Siin hugged the child to him in a kneel as she released a most horrible concussive force again from her little body. Veygornne was pushed back only a few paces and grew a large painful expression. Siin huffed out muffled words in his own use of magecraft in puffs and coughs as he had absorbed the brunt of her force. The girl screamed and flailed in his viced grip.

Veygornne made a decision and flourished his palms in some motion toward the girl. Her skin began to be pulled in small needle-like pinches every place about her body. When Siin had no choice but to loose the child, she sprung from his grasp and hung in the air amidst a web of what looked to be the pulling of her own skin against the strings trailing from Veygornne's outstretched fingertips.

“Kill it!” Veygornne called, holding the girl aloft; near-invisible tethers pulling at her skin.

“She's a child, Veygornne!”

“Who offered you boon?!” Veygornne ignored the persuaded battlemage.

The girl, strung taut, hissed and cried allowed. “Shriiiiaaaamm!”

“She's casting something. Kill her Siin!”

“Help me!” The child burst into tears. Siin stood holding his dagger by its decorative metal sheath but her weeping and sobbing was holding his own will at bay.

Another dead Blackgale rolled between the trees where stood the aBn and the wolvkin Agent. Percival followed it huffing his win. “Here.” He panted. “You are here.”

“The girl is a Vessel.” Veygornne told him.

“No...a mancer. Stole her. Enslaved her.”

“Siin, you have to kill it! You must break its sway over you.” Percival pleaded.

“You can free here, Percival!”

“Siin you're believing your eyes. Kill it!” Even as another Blackgale galloped upon them, Percival's deft hands shot up slivers of glass to displace the thing in his rush to convince Siin. He and Veygornne both knew the boy had to conquer this persuasion that fed on a very open wound of his past.

Siin was losing himself in his own memories. “Percival! You did it for me. You freed me! You can free her!”

“The girl does not live! There is nothing to be freed!”

The child held in chords of pulled skin cried to the woods in a most horrid roar.

“She calling a ghost! It will end us for certain!” Veygornne cried. “I will tear her to shreds if he belays, Percival!”

“I can't...I can't kill her.” Siin was quivering within a drowning memory. Sweats drenched his brow.

“aBn!” Percival commanded and some of the hesitation immediately dropped from Siin. “Do! It!”