Mar was rather rudely awoken from his rest by the Merchant giving his foot a solid kick. Unbeknownst to the Merchant, he had chosen the one attached to Mar’s injured leg to kick, and Mar woke to a bolt of blinding pain shooting through him like lightning. On instinct Mar’s hand fell to the throwing knife strapped to his belt, but he stopped moving when he saw who was in front of him. The merchant stepped back, frowning as he put each of his hands on his hips. “Curfew’s starting soon, time for you to leave.” He said gruffly, in a tone that invited no argument. Mar poked his head around the side of the large man to observe the golden light of the night once more fast approaching. ‘Shit, I should have asked him to wake me earlier.’ Mar thought to himself.

“Don’t suppose I can pay to spend the night here?” He asked, jiggling his still obviously filled coin purse. The merchant frowned, looking like a man who’d be very happy to fleece Mar for the pleasure of a night on the hard, dusty floor of his back room. But eventually he shook his head.

“Imperials aren’t playing around this time; they got this whole town locked down and they’re not keen on loosening up their grip anytime soon. To be frank I don’t know how the hell you convinced the guard at the front gate to let you in, and I don’t what to know. But I can’t afford to be found harbouring you.” He looked Mar up and down, weighing him up with his eyes. Mar wondered what the merchant saw when he looked at him so thoroughly.

“I can give you directions to a farming family who might be willing to shelter you. You might be able to get there before the sun sets too, provided you walk fast.” Said the merchant.

“For a price?” Replied Mar, who was well and truly tired of losing money, these past few days had been an absolute disaster, and he wasn’t going to give this greed pig the time of day. He’d just have to rough it in the fields. Not the first time he’d done that, and not the last time either.

Mar simply rose to his feet, slung his new pack over his shoulder and thanked the merchant for his hospitality before leaving. He almost managed not to choke on the word hospitality too.

“Woah hold up there.” Said the Merchant. “I’m not here to rob you blind. If you’re interested look for the Robinsons family farm, should be about a thirty-minute walk south-west from here. Tell them O’Reilly sent you. They should give you a roof at the very least.”

Mar paused for a moment, unsure what to say, not used to a merchant being so forthcoming with information that could be used to profit from. The merchant, seemingly able to read his thoughts, spoke before he could. “With the Imperials here us commoners need to stick together, those higher than though bastards won’t give us an inch. Good luck out there.” He said. Mar nodded and thanked the man genuinely this time before leaving.

It was as he was making his way towards the village gates once more that the trouble started. The first thing he noticed was the noise. It seemed as though the Imperials had grown more bold while he had slept, and the locals were suffering the consequences.

The noises were typical of a town occupied by an enemy force, and while Mar had unfortunately seen his share of those, it was impossible to ever get truly used to them and the sounds they produced. They were ugly places. Men who risked their lives for victory often thought themselves as being owned something by the world at large and tended to take it from the locals. Regardless of whether the local’s fathers, mothers, sons, or daughters had been killed for their victory.

The Imperials maintained a male only army, whereas the freedom kingdoms included plenty of women in their ranks. This gave the Imperial army a bad reputation, particularly among the free kingdoms, when it came to assaults on citizens. While both sides considered such acts inherently illegal, with the officers cracking down on any they came across, it was unfortunately true that such things were more likely to be perpetrated by an Imperial force. If one wasn’t being so charitable however, they might say that while there was a chance for an assault occurring during a Free Kingdom’s occupation, it was almost certain for an Imperial one.

The smart choice was to keep walking, avoiding the fight, and slip out of doge. There was a hunter following him already, he didn’t need any more attention. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a gallows setup in the main centre of the town square, with a young woman standing on it. An execution. There was a slim chance she actually deserved it, which helped to sooth the little prick of morality Mar had been slowly developing over the years.

Mar kept walking and got halfway across the corner of the main square he needed to pass through before an imperial called out to him.

"You there! Where do you think you're going?"

Mar pivoted on the heels of his well-worn boots to face the man. He was a middle aged sergeant whose his face bore the sneer of a man who believed himself utterly above those he disrespected, and he very rarely respected those around him.

"Ahh. Home?" Mar replied.

"No, no, no, no. That's not where you're going." Replied the imperial, his purple armour bearing a blood stain.

"It's not?" Said Mar, wondering how the Imperial could possibly know that.

"No, you're staying right here with this fine crowd of your peers." As the man spoke his arms extended out wide, as he turned from one side to the next. Glancing at those surrounding him. His eyes were glowing brown threats to those who dared to meet his gaze.

"And you're going to watch." Said the man, as the other Imperials snickered. It was then that Mar saw the centre of the square properly, taking a long look instead of just squinting out of the corner of his eye. In the centre of the square gallows of a sort had been erected, and on them were two women and two men. The Imperials surrounding them were leering. It looked like it should have been an execution, but the gallows lacked any sort of chopping block or noose.

"What will I be watching?" Asked Mar, his voice was stable and calm despite the boiling of his blood. Was this rage? He'd felt anger before, but his hands were trembling. He was desperate to reach for his sword and cut this man down to size. He hadn't felt like this before.

"You free kingdom curs think you can lay with whoever you like and get away with it. These four." The Sargent pointed harshly towards the group on the gallows.

"Had even been allowed to marry one another." He spat on the ground. "That is to say the men married the men, and the women married the women."

His lip curled into the meanest smile Mar had ever seen. His eyes alight with righteous fury, a bigot with his boots on the throats of the people he saw as abhorrent.

"So we're going to re-educate them, and this town is going to watch. So that each and everyone one of your perverts know what happens when you cross over the line that separates man from rabid beast." Spittle flew from the Sargent's mouth as he finished his impassioned speech.

Before, when Mar had been nothing more than a machine, he had been used by his commanders to police communities on more than one occasion. It had been during this time that he had fought and killed his first human. He had felt nothing afterwards, no self-disdain, but no gratification either. Killing Clay, however, had always felt great.

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When his sword cleaved straight through the neck of the sergeant, a blow so quick and clean that it could have been missed in a blink, Mar felt like he'd just cut down a Clay beast instead of a man.

As the sergeant’s body and separated head fell to the ground with two wet thumps, every head that hasn't already been looking his way snapped towards him. The free kingdom citizens looked viciously content with his handiwork, but then noticed the rounded edge of his sword, and suddenly went pale.

The Imperials, who had less exposure to the Chained mythos, didn't notice the rounded edge at all. Simply staring at Mar in shock, a look which quickly turned to anger. Mar would have capitalised on their shock to continue his attack on the group or maybe get the hell out of there. But truth be told the attack had shocked him as much as it had the people around him.

He didn't know what had come over him, the rage had pushed his self-control, until it had snapped like an over extended rubber band. He didn't remember drawing his sword, he barely remembered executing a perfect sword strike. He definitely didn't know how the hell he was going to get out of this town alive now…

****

It took Kalier a couple of hours to make her way from the edge of the forest to the village. As she walked, she entertained herself by studying the makeup of the fields around her. Some were well-kept farmlands, maintained through great effort by generations of farmers and their families. A larger family was seen as beneficial, as the growing children could work the land for free, and people in this part of the world could never get enough free labour. Kalier wondered at the ethics of having such a large family so close to death forest, it was only a matter of time until another Clay incursion marched on this area again.

The remains of the last great battle fought here were obvious in the sections of farmland that had yet to be reclaimed by the locals. Rusted piles of armour and weapons dotted the landscape, the tattered remains of old banners and clothes appearing here and there. Catching on the small shrubs and hardy trees which had stubbornly grown in the once chewed up ground. Here and there the barrel of a cannon stuck out of the ground at odd angles, often a small crater of dirt surrounding them. Kalier had once seen a Clay charge an artillery emplacement and flick aside it’s guns as if they were children’s toys. But apparently the old, more intelligence Clay would pick up the cannons to use against the solders, at least if the battlefield scholars were to be believed.

Judging from the angle of more than a few rusted cannon barrels, Kalier was obliged to believe them. Looking at the field that had been reclaimed by the farmers Kalier wondered how the peasants had removed them. Or had they simply filled in the craters they made and got on with their job? Were fields with more artillery pieces considered less valuable? Were fields with more bodies or burial sites considered more valuable? It was a shame that the libraries of the hunter academy had so few books on farming. It was of an even greater shame that the only books it did contain were written in the imperial kingdoms, where the farming land was of much greater quality and hadn’t had any major battles fought on it since the falling.

Kalier could have asked a farmer for the answers of course, had she not been on a tight schedule. But hunters like her were taught to remain aloof from commoners. The peasantry believed that hunters were somewhat mythical, somewhat more than simple humans. The hunter order saw no reason to correct them of this fact and pressured its members to do the same.

----

When Kalier at long last returned to the village she found an unfamiliar guard manning the entrance. Guards weren’t usually foolish enough to request their usual ‘tolls’ from Hunters, but when villagers felt abandoned, they often started to misbehave. This particular guard was no exception and held up a calloused hand that was more accustomed to gripping a hoe then it was to gripping the no doubt poorly maintained sword by his side.

“Did the guard you relieved mention a hunter by the name of Kalier by chance?” She asked, her eyes as bright and friendly as the ocean’s deepest abyss. The guard dropped his hand, and quickly dropped into a simple bow, extending said offending limb behind his back as he did so.

“Is there anyone missing from the village? Any violence while my partner and I were away?” Asked Kalier. The guard’s eyes (which were already quite wide) suddenly widened even further in fear. It would have been comical had Kalier not been focused on the task at hand.

The guard swallowed a few times before replying, hunters taking an interest in his village’s domestic affairs wouldn't mean anything good, and he was not paid enough for that.

“T-There’s a missing girl, the Inn keeper’s lass. Other then that we haven’t heard nothin’.” He replied.

“Keep up the good work.” Kalier muttered as she strode past him and made a beeline towards the village’s inn. The guard called after her, no doubt wanting to ask a barrage of questions. Kalier didn’t have the time nor the patience for such a thing.

Despite the high foot traffic in the area Kalier was still able to follow the aura trail that she had been following all morning. It set her nerves on edge, and she started grinding her teeth as the muscles in her body tensed, ready for action. The aura was old, so it was most likely that the Chained had left something behind which had been thoroughly soaked in his aura. Such a thing could be highly useful in the process of better understanding her target.

But if it was a trap? A village was a poor location for a fight, her main advantage was her lightning-based attacks and abilities, but these were difficult to utilise with any degree of accuracy. It would be easy for a stray lightning bolt to kill a villager or set fire to one of the many wooden buildings. However, the amount of damage an unattended Chained could do would far exceed any damage she was likely to cause. The order would support her decision, provided the Chained was dead at the end of the fight. If it wasn't… Well that didn't bear thinking about.

An inn in the early hours of the morning was always a queer sight. The remains of the previous night had yet to be fully cleaned away, but that didn’t seem to bother the occupants who had filed in before the sun rose to it’s peak in the sky. Each had a hollow look to their eyes, each had visible scars from long healed wounds, and each viewed their drinks with a mixture of self-loathing and necessity.

Kalier did not know where her life with the hunter order would lead her, she just hoped that she never found herself in an inn like this one, staring at her drink like that.

The bar maid returned from the back of the inn; a no doubt permanent frown etched on her face. Said frown dropped when she saw Kalier standing there, and the woman went as white as a noble’s sheets instead.

“Should we take this to the back room?” Asked Kalier.

The bar maid simply nodded awkwardly and made her way into the room with all the excitement of a condemned man walking up to the gallows. Kalier followed her, keeping her distance as to have time to avoid a desperate attack, and watching her like a hawk with eyes that (at least according to the bar maid) seemingly knew far too much. The mess of the bar area did not follow Kalier into the inn’s kitchen, which was instead orderly and clean, even if it was obviously too small to efficiently prepare meals for the inn’s evening rush.

Inside the bar maid’s husband was working diligently to prepare a stew for said evening rush. He stopped when he saw her enter, slowly putting the knife he had been holding onto the bench and stepping away from it. Kalier gave a slight nod, showing she had recognised the action for what it was. The two were silent, waiting for her to speak. So, she spoke.

“My mother taught me that it was best to set examples of those who had broken the rules, so that those who were considering doing the same would reconsider.” Kalier leaned back against the door, it’s solid wooden surface soothing and sure against her back. She crossed her arms.

“I am not my mother. However, that doesn’t mean I am willing to disregard what you’ve done.”

The two of them started speaking at the same time, each spouting something along the lines of “What were we supposed to do? She's our daughter.” And “If you were a parent you’d understand.” Kalier silenced them both by raising a single hand.

“I’m not here to discuss your daughter, I’m here to discuss the hunter you hired to retrieve her. How long did you spend getting to know the man that would have the ultimate power over your daughters’ fate? How desperate were you to avoid the order's wrath that you felt it necessary to throw her to a wolf, on the slim chance that he was an honourable man?”

The two would have spoken again, but Kalier kept her hand up, indicating that the question was rhetoric.

“That man wasn’t a man at all. It was a thing. A monster. A Chained... You’re lucky us so-called devils in the order got to her first.” Kalier’s face twisted in disgust. “Now I’ve got to hunt down the beast, and you’re going to help me.” As she spoke Kalier slowly advanced on the husband, picking up the knife he had dropped casually, before, in a motion so quick and smooth the inn keeper could barely believe his eyes, pressing the well-maintained blade to his neck.

“If you don’t, I will make an example of you, and your daughter. Do I make myself clear?”

The inn keeper went to nod, thought twice about it, and mumbled out a simple, defeated.

“Yes.”

Kalier pulled the keeper towards her, his body pressing up against hers, the knife between them. The juices of the onion the man had been cutting dripped from the knife and onto Kalier’s dark blue jacket. “Is he here?” She asked, whispering ever so quietly into the inn keeper’s ear.

“N-No.” He replied, in a voice that may as well have been a shout in comparison. If he was lying, well he would have been the best liar Kalier had ever met. Kalier pushed herself away from the man and threw the knife onto the chopping board where it belonged. Its clattering was the only noise in the silence that followed before she spoke again.

“Good. Now did he leave something here?” Kalier asked. It was the bar maid who answered. “He asked us to stash his pack in a room. T-That’s it.” She said, her normally stern voice quiet and subdued.

“I’ll need to take a look at it, mind getting it for me?” Kalier replied, turning away from the inn keeper to face her.

“I-I can do that but Ma’am please, what happened to our daughter?” She asked, her eyes watering with unspent tears. Kalier wondered if arresting one, or both of them, knowing how many prisoners were sold into slavery, would have been kinder then the mercy she had to offer. She would spend a long time wondering.

“That’s your punishment, you’ll never know for sure. It’s the most leniency I can give you. It’s all I can give you, considering what you’ve done. Had your daughter escaped death forest and led Clay back to this village they would have wiped out everyone living here. I don't know what the Chained would have done with her, but it would have been worse. You put this whole village at risk, just to try and save your daughter from her punishment. This is what you deserve.”

The bar maid simply nodded, wiping her eyes, and leaving the small kitchen to go and grab the pack for Kalier. The inn keeper behind her just sobbed, his tears falling onto the clean floor that Ilivar would never again walk on.