Rhamelia knelt by the entrance to the barrow and pulled a dagger from her boot, letting it twist in her hand for a few seconds while she waited for Chassie to return from the gloom within. A few heartbeats later, an orange glow appeared from the depths and her cherubic face limned in torchlight materialised in the shadows like a ghost. She strode quickly to the barrow entrance and came to Rhamelia’s side, her flesh was chilly but slick with sweat.

“Well?” the Paladin of Lys asked her companion.

Chassie’s face was fixed in a slight confusion, she licked at her dry lips, “There’s rot, lord. The recent dead stir, there’s a working going on near the bottom of the depths. A talented augurer, but nothing with the power to threaten us… I hope.” she finished.

Rhamelia smiled wanly and clapped a hand to the woman’s shoulder. She had a breathtakingly acute leysense, particularly for the workings of Dalorne, the malevolent aspect of death, decay, and plague. Rhamelia let her own senses quest below, feeling the sickly heat of fever that billowed from a hexed object of power within. Could be anything, a cherished book, a well used tool from the harvest shed, any node with a connection to the village could be a vector for the augurer to begin its work, gnawing at the boundaries of the domains and carving space in the magical firmament beneath the village until its power could blossom and unfurl.

Rhamelia Von Grace was an ordained Paladin of Lys. Chastity Renaux was her Knight companion and leyscout. They were on a mission of mercy in a tiny hamlet on the border of Lys’ domain. Word spread to a horse market near the main road that the citizens were cursed with attacks of the roaming dead on their livestock, and unknown sickness befalling their hearths. Rhamelia was serving her second tour as a fully ordained Paladin in Lys’ Seventh Sorority, the “Winged Justice”.

She was a tallish woman, a full head over Chassie, who was only average height. She had long, straw coloured hair that she kept in a single plait down her back. She had a wide frame, from a previous lifetime spent diving for food and treasure in the Adeberian shoals of The Wheel’s northeastern shores. It gave her a tan and brawny visage, with light freckles adorning most of her body. She had piercing green eyes set in her plain face. Rhamelia was lithe, with a wiry strength that snugged her body tightly and allowed her to dance with ease among enemies. She was clad in a traditional paladin’s armor; a half-plate cuirass, pauldrons, gauntlets and helmet that she now pulled down and cinched tightly. She had a skirt of chainmail with interleaved plates inscribed with filigree scarab of Lys.

She travelled light; aside from a pouch of quick curatives and some tools tucked under her left arm, she carried no additional equipment into battle aside from her dagger and broadsword. The sword was a work of art; steel polished to a mirror shine and sharpened to a razor’s edge. The hilt was adorned with a beetle with wings spread covering a ceremonial cross. The pommel was wrapped in supple leather and dark with sweat and use. She drew the sword now with the high pitched trill of a metallic choir ready to orchestrate violence. The blade gleamed with a supernatural light in the din, imbued with ley energy from the domain of Lys. If the cadre of dead stirring in the barrow were of Dalorne’s aspect, the blade would bubble and sizzle the flesh from their bones, as the scarab god’s infinite hunger for death and decay consumed their essence.

Chassie drew her spear and took position to Rhamelia’s rear right. The Paladin and her knight attendant stalked into the barrow, their eyes filling with dark ichor as black tears began to flow down their cheeks. The battle lines were drawn and the dice cast, ley energy from Lys and Dalorne swirled in a chaotic maelstrom that lashed at the two women like tidal currents. Each ripple of power struck the core of their being and reverberated deeply, Rhamelia seized on the energy and channelled it neatly into her own reserves of power, becoming lighter on her feet, faster, more nimble, stronger. The core of her dedication acting as a natural sink for Dalorne’s malevolence.

Rhamelia ascended to a calm throne of tranquillity within her mind as she stalked towards the shambling horror that shuffled to greet her. She watched her arms lift the blade and bring it down with a throaty scream of exertion, the flesh on the staggering corpse separated neatly. Whisper quiet the blade worked through its lethal strokes, like a seamstress weaving true death before her, the paladin moved through the mangled sentry like an ill wind, severing an arm at the shoulder, the head, clipping its body to the floor from the knee and simply pouring herself over and through.

She heard a crunch of sternum as Chassie shoved her spear through the creature’s heart. She gasped as a surge of power lifted her, the black tears on her cheeks began to burn as she got closer to the augurer within the barrow. She heard the fluttering of wings buzzing in her ears as Lys’ song began to fill her senses. This was her purpose manifest, her devotion, and she strode into the dark and parted it like a sea of shadows. Her entire essence thrummed, like a brass bell ringing.

The paladin strode purposefully towards an arch that led to the rear chamber of the barrow, she saw the brutes huddled around the exit with leysense, a ghostly blue fire around the skeletal warriors with their feeble tactics. She feinted nimbly into the arch, waiting for the ambushers to spring; they did. The clattering hulks nearly smashed each other with mauls and staggered into the archway. Rhamelia seized on their misfortune and cut them down, her blade grew hot in her hands and began to keen a high pitched song as black blood from the ghouls sizzled and boiled from the steel.

She was close now… to the denmaster. Chassie was still behind her, using her spear to puncture hearts and send all the fallen back to the spiral, with whispered prayers and a lilting song just beneath her lips. She spared a quick look back, with a fierce grin of determination at the girl, who stared back agape, transfixed by the sight of her lord aflame in battle. Rhamelia was incandescent, her form was like a splash of molten copper. Ethereal wings fluttered out behind her, above her shoulders, below her hips. Streaks of dark ichor poured from her eyes, now fully black, like orbs of ink. The tears of Lys rolled freely down her body in long rivulets. Her armor melted to transparency, revealing her muscled flesh beneath, the sword arm one continuous needle of death, she stalked into the darkness where the denmaster waited like a flash of lightning given substance.

The darkness was absolute in the lair, threatening to subsume even Rhamelia's godly blaze. A thumping totemic rumble stirred the inky shadows, which began to percuss in rhythm. A pair of fiery green orbs blazed at the back of the lair, then a mouth beneath, hitched in a smile. The denmaster saw nothing but a meal offering itself. Chassie wasn’t sure who was more delirious in this moment, her, the denmaster, or Rhammy. As if in answer, Rhamiel leapt at the back of the lair, a shriek of manic glee issued from the rear, the paladin and the denmaster clashed, first their wills, and then their forms. The thunderclap of power illuminated the lair for a stark moment, and shutter strobed with awesome energy. Pulsing magicks whorled violently past Chassie’s face, filling her nostrils, her mouth, her ears, threatening to drown her. She coughed and spat the confluence of death and life out onto the stone and watched her spit sizzle. When she turned back to the lair, it was already over.

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Rhammy was standing over the fallen denmaster in triumph, his head neatly severed from his body, the blade was so hot it cauterised everything it passed through, leaving no blood or gristle to behold, just thin ash that stirred in the breeze of expended energy. It had been a man. A living one, at some point. An apostle of Dalorne, an augurer of particularly potent attunement to the ley. In its lair, a throne of skulls, arcane workings, an alchemist’s laboratory, the secret workings of the darkness that undermined all life and eventually swallowed it whole. It was anathema to their aspect.

Rhamiel looked around the room furtively, spying the accursed object, the nexus of power that bound all the threads of this barrow, its soldiers, its webs of darkness woven about the hamlet of Elonia. It was a black key, encrusted with dirt and filth, rusted with age. Just looking at it, it was easy to tell that it had no purpose, the teeth were too simple to lock anything. It was a loci for power, a vessel, and nothing more mundane, almost a metaphor. It absorbed the light that licked off the tip of Rhammy’s sword, like a hungry vortex in a black sea. She raised her blade and brought it down with a scream, the hexed object shattered under her blow into a thousand pieces of shrapnel, Chassie hissing as one bit into her cheek and drew blood. The din in the barrow vanished nearly instantly, the ghouls collapsing into heaps of dry rotted flesh and bone. A vaporous steam wafted through the slick stone tunnels and burial chambers, darkness given substance evaporating into the ether. Rhammy finally slowed her ragged breathing, looking more or less normal now, she wiped the blade clean on the black robe of the dead denmaster and sheathed it on her hip. Turning on a heel to exit the crypts and take her prize from the village. Her easy nature was serious, and she spared no look to Chassie at this time; the business ahead perhaps more grim than what had already transpired.

Rhamiel knelt by a brook nearby, wiping her face and cleaning her hands. She pulled a cloth from her bag and removed bits of their encounter beneath the ground, watching them float away and dissolve in the chatty water.

“The townspeople will be reticent,” she said, hearing Chassie’s approach behind her.

“They know the bargain they’ve struck…” she replies.

“I’ve one already chosen,” Rhammy says, with a hint of finality.

“I know her, I marked her upon our arrival,” the knight responds flatly.

“On with it, then,” the paladin stands, wrenching the blood soaked rag in her gauntleted hands. She turns to Chassie and spies the blood on her cheek from the exploding loci fragment. She gingerly reaches out and dabs at the crimson streak, wiping it away with a motherly caress.

She stows the cloth in her bag, “You did well in there, Chassis,”

“Thank you, lord,” she bows her head in response.

Rhammy grips her shoulders and faces her for a moment, “I’m to receive my first engraving next month,” she says without much emotion.

Chassie’s breath catches despite herself, “a well deserved honor, no doubt, lord,”

Rhammy has a strained smile and nods, “It will be a basic weaving, but it will elevate us, our work here in the Wheel. Us. Not just me.”

Chassie turns her head aside, her face pained, “Some gifts are not meant for such as me, lord,”

Rhammy pulls the young woman’s face back to hers gently, “You’re the most steadfast retainer I know, and what’s more your leysense is the most potent of the gift I’ve ever encountered. No matter what the engravers say, you’ll do amazing things Chassie. We will do amazing things, together.”

The young woman turns into a nervous girl for a second, shifting her weight from one boot to the next and feeling as though she wants to collapse in on herself. She has always felt inadequate in this way, of not being the special sort that can bear an engraving ritual, that her entire devotion was a compromised joke. Rhammy has never made her feel that way, singling her out in the sorority to take on as her attendant. Together they’ve spent the last year roaming the lands of Lys and borders beyond, bringing warmth, light, and healing to any they could. But now…

“Now is the hard part though,” Rhammy nodded, sensing her thoughts. The women stood, and Rhammy slipped her hand through Chassie’s as they strode over to the village.

The people were already gathered in the square where the roads met, a muddy mess. They looked like a gaggle of ruffians, mudstreaked, bedraggled and unkempt, wiry with hunger. This was a village started on a dashed hope and clung to life out of bitter contempt for death. In a way, it was an admirable devotee of Lys, Rhamiel made sure to mark these thoughts in her journal later.

As the knights approached the village center, an older woman knelt, offering up a serving platter of bread, dried meat, and fruit leather. A veritable holiday feast not seen in this place much. Rhammy ate of the platter hungrily, leaving most for the villagers to share, but eating enough to honor their gift.

“Fair knights,” the old woman began, “we thanketh ye’ for the cleansing, the sending of our poor cursed dead, cursed to roam, cursed to try and feed on kin, o’ woe is our lot here, this backwater that nameth escapes the notice of hist’ry”

Rhammy cocked a smile at the bargaining, this woman was good, but it wouldn’t be enough. She pierced her target with her glittering green eyes; a girl no more than 11 or so. Raven haired and tall, she stood straight and delicate on her feet, blue eyes downcast at the mud, trying to make herself invisible. She was the blossom on this bed of weeds, and Rhammy meant to pluck her for Lys’ service.

The villagers traced the paladin’s gaze, and knew. Her mother began to wail. The old woman tried her best, “O’ fair knights, ye set a price too high, a price that’ll kill this village dead it will, our lovely Lyric is betrothed to a lordling in the west, and many bargains rest upon her flesh, many boons for us who hath suffered in this muck and mire.”

At hearing her name, Lyric raised her eyes to look at the knights. She could barely constrain herself; salvation was before her. In a few years time she’d be pregnant and weighed down with the suckling welps of a fat lordling. She could instead go with Lys and take up a devotion, live a life she never dreamed of.

Chassie fetched the knights horses without a word, it was time to embark, before tempers began to flare beneath foul words and accusations. Lys’ bargain was ironclad; your troubles will be dealt with, but the sorority would have its pick of the children that remained. The village had no hope of material negotiations, service was all that approached the true cost. Lyric ran into her home and reappeared with a small bag of belongings a short while later, as the knights mounted up and prepared to take their leave. The villagers faces were sunken with weary dread. The immediate threat of the augurer was destroyed, but what lingered now was a potential slow death amongst broken negotiations and dimmed prospects. The village may or may not survive; this was not anyone’s concern, least of all Lys’, the scarab goddess of The Wheel.

Rhammy reached a metal fist down to the girl as she approached her horse, and lifted her lightly onto the back behind her. She felt the child grip her fiercely as they cantered off towards the north, back to the sorority, to a new life, as once Rhamiel herself had been plucked from obscurity, the circle closed.