Asrael left Ellie and Titus to Neda’s care and departed from the guests’ quarters. What any fleshmender might’ve considered a patchwork job was, to him, a miracle in and of itself. The countless fractures and fragments had formed a field of razor-sharp traps, which he had been forced to navigate through her supple skin to create temporary shunts and passageways to feed her flesh its vital magic and blood.
He had, in fact, been so absorbed in his work that he had failed to heed the calls of Kerras, whose constant barrage of attention-seeking prods now provoked a looming headache. As much as Asrael wished to find some calm corner in which he could lie down and take stocks of the still-living men and women in the garrison, he found Kerras’ desperation finally worthy of a sliver of his attention.
“What!?” Asrael shouted out into the dark corners of the hall, as he rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Someone is coming!” Kerras’ mind spoke to the necromancer’s. Asrael jerked upright and opened his mind’s eyes to where Kerras was diverting his attention. He was peering through the eyes of a blood-drenched Hungered, whose victim already hosted a hundred flies beneath his feet.
To the north, beyond the heavy gates, the soldier looked down on the eastern road to see a mind-boggling sight.
Two men atop white horses preceded four, unending rows of individuals. By Asrael’s estimation, there had to be well over a thousand of them, all arranged in a tidy formation. The two rows of white-robed individuals stood out from the two rows of black-armored men, all decorated with purple tabards and the symbol of the Pyre- crossed with a tall I.
The open-mouthed soldier atop the wall narrowed its undead eyes to focus on the silvery scalp of the frontmost man. The aged warrior at the front of the procession glared at his surroundings with disdain and a suspicion only confirmed by the logstics’ station's report and the men’s claim to have no knowledge of what went on beyond the wall.
“My Lord...” Sun spoke from Ingvard’s side. The aged, silver-haired warrior turned to his companion and nodded, before raising his regal nose up high to sniff the air.
“The gates have been sealed. The hinges are broke and they are barricaded on either side.” Ingvard raised his gloved hand to his chin and stared up at the distant speck that was Asrael’s warrior.
“They have made it clear that they do not intend to communicate nor open this gate. As much as I doubt Bartholomew’s report, something seems to be out of the ordinary.” Ingvard looked over his shoulder to see his unmoving men continue to glare forwards at his back. He spoke to his smooth-chinned colleague: “Open it.”
Sun did not hesitate- he never did. From being Ingvard’s companion for the better part of two decades, he knew it to be futile and well out of his place to protest. Therefore, he looked over his shoulder to command one man in particular- one of his trusted Purged from the long procession behind them.
Asrael watched as the men wordlessly shifted to obey some unspoken, silent command. The four ranks of men split to allow a seemingly unexceptional Purged access to the gate. Not a man looked twice at the man in his white robe as he slowly stepped forwards to halt before the gate and patiently await Ingvard and Sun’s retreat back into the ranks.
As shaken as Asrael was, he could not help but stare at the curious sight of the men leaving this one, abused magus, about fifty measures of space around him.
“Open it.” Sun muttered as he and Ingvard approached the front row of their men and, just as his men, turned to face the other direction. The Purged raised his hands to touch the tall, metal gates to immediate results. He could feel the energy ripple the air around his guardsman- even from atop the wall.
The deteriorated stones and dust along the ramparts clicked and clattered at first, but before long; even pebbles slammed against the ancient wood as if they were mallets.
The entire wall trembled beneath Asrael’s usurped feet. Down below, a bright-white light permanently scorched the retinas of his soldier. Epithelium and neuroreceptors burned and autocoagulated as the undead stared at the bright light, until finally, an ear-splittingly loud slam shook the world within the wall- shattering the few, remaining windows of Pilta’s storefronts.
Dissatisfied with the resulting lack of vision from his trusted man, Asrael turned his attention onto another atop the wall- one who had been spared the brightness of the light. There, he observed what he had imagined to be impossible...
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Where the doors had once stood, now only a scorched opening remained and the doors were nowhere the be seen- no... not nowhere... Asrael glanced about the city to see that the unfathomably tall, metallic doors had been flung across the city, where they had collided against the eastern wall to form tall cracks in the barrier.
Asrael beheld the visage in disbelief. What ungodly creature could muster such magical power? Better yet, what could motivate a man of the supposed ‘Inquisition’ to act so rashly as to risk so much by openly assaulting the city- their allies, for all they knew... Regardless of the reasons for their assault, Asrael had an inkling that these visitors would not take kindly to his assault and bolted back into the guest’s quarters to command Neda: “Go. Take the tunnels out of the city- go to the Village. And bring your fellow ingrate.”
Neda had seen Asrael’s no-nonsense expression and was eager to question what had provoked such a profound frown, but he disappeared back out into the hallway before she could even open her mouth. “Hey, wait-” But Asrael paid her no heed.
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The thousand-or-so men in their shining armors, the incredibly powerful magi- it all pointed to these fresh arrivals being none other than Ingvard and his flock of rumored, legendary soldiers. Asrael bolted up the long, bloody hallways and veered around corners to finally find Titus’ chamber, where Bartholomew still sat in the darkness and glared into the desk with a slack jaw and a thousand-yard-stare plastered onto his pale face. Ingvard’s untimely arrival meant that their time in Pilta had come to a sudden, forcible end.
“Bartholomew, come. It seems your Uncle has decided to choose today for his untimely arrival.” Asrael swung his coat to leave, but stopped as soon as he realized... Bartholomew was not following. The necromancer scoffed and ordered the strewn-about dead soldiers to bring the hysteria-stricken Sargerrei. They approached him from all sides- covered in the blood of innocent people with their arms raised before them and with a clear agenda radiating off of them.
“I am not going anywhere with you.” Bartholomew muttered- stopping the dead in their tracks. Asrael jerked his head back around to see that the Sargerrei had not moved in the slightest- still, he satt at the table and stared emptily ahead of him. The necromancer lowered his brow with displeasure and ordered his men to hold. The distraught Bartholomew’s hands tremored atop the table- fueled by his determination not to go anywhere. Asrael had expected to view the man pathetic, where he sat in the darkness and stared at the open door, where one of a scant few friends stood in his tall glory and glared his green eye back at him with a mute frown of his own.
“You do understand that this Ingvard is coming, yes? From what you have told me, your last encounter did not end well for you, yet you insist on braving him before me?” Bartholomew scoffed and broke from his distant gazing to look at Asrael with a measuring glare.
“This has got nothing to do with bravery...” Bartholomew hung his head before continuing: “My father and Ingvard may have their own reasons for their pursuit of wrongful justice. But despite their motives, I deserve punishment- be it yours or theirs. I might not have been as wrongful in my actions as you and they have, but for my passivity and my lack of action, I deserve whatever torment awaits me in the Hells. I await it. I welcome it.”
Asrael could feel Kerras warning him that Ingvard had already taken his first steps inside the city gates, meaning he had little time left. The necromancer bared his teeth as he spoke: “Listen to me, you fool. They will torture you to death for what you’ve helped me achieve here. Whatever post-mortem punishment you speak of, will be naught in comparison to what they have in store for you!” But Bartholomew remained still, even as the candle over him burned its last droplets of wax. In the resulting darkness, the silver armor glistened in the dim light bleeding through the open door.
It would cost the necromancer nothing to have his men leap from the shadows and tear Bartholomew apart. The man had been recruited to the cause to spite his father- to drive Asrael’s vengeance home in a glorious, misguided mental image of the son murdering the father. Yet... the undead soldiers remained still throughout the room, staring their accusatory, green eyes at Bartholomew. Asrael was not one for mercy, both he and Bartholomew knew it. Both understood that leaving the Sargerrei alive could, potentially, come to bite Asrael’s posterior.
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Ingvard had seen much in his days of service. Together with the Sargerrei family he had purified the lands with fire, he had established the order of the Purged and watched the numerous tortures that had come with it and he had delivered justice to the unjust and Ungodly... but never had he seen anything akin to what he was seeing as he stepped through the doors of the silent city.
The empty streets appeared as if a great battle had raged for years on end. Filth and furniture had been assembled into barricades and weapons, buildings had been burned and razed, but most disheartening were the houses- all of which had been boarded up from the inside.
“I have seen epidemics before, but never anything such as this. What is your report?” Ingvard questioned his favored Purged as he scanned the city. A gust of wind blew old ashes into Sun’s unblinking eyes. He watched the swirls of debris trail the outline of the long-dead flames on a land so scarred by pain that the air tasted like the Sulphur that awaited its inhabitants in Hell. Sun’s silence spoke volumes about the condition of the city and thusly, Ingvard voiced over his shoulder- towards the first line of men: “No one leaves before I say so. Half of the Legion will guard the gate- the rest will follow me to find Titus.”
And thus, the lengthy days of Pilta’s silence ended in a rhythmic clatter of boots- headed towards the Garrison.