> And lo we followed in the umbrar’s wake and it was terrible. It was of the kind to grow crueler and cunning in its experience of the frailties of man and had in its travels wrought such a terrible toll that it might have been considered among the wisest of such beasts.

>

> Daily we lost men broken by their witness until finally we came upon the creature amidst its hateful frolics and slew it.

>

> Take mine lesson thus: never permit an umbrar to reach such heights. ‘Twas a learning that did not come cheaply.

>

> Excerpt from ‘My Wanderings’, journal of Captain Valant. Dated Year 156 After Fall.

Jack watched himself move between the bodies.

Horror dwelt within him, growing, feeding on each new bloody sight. It grew sharp talons to claw at his throat, it grew fangs to poison his nerves, it promised dreams most terrible.

But that was the Jack inside, the one who watched.

The one who acted moved between the bodies. The separation of these selves is what let him ignore the cacophony of the squabbling birds, to coldly move past the densest aggregations of them as causes long lost. The outside Jack noted the frequency of bite wounds at the neck. The outside Jack flipped one such body that had been tangled in blankets—largely untouched by the scavengers—and saw the blue tinged flesh of suffocation.

The partition between selves flickered for a moment upon understanding—many had been left alive, unable to move, until the birds came.

He could feel himself begin to spiral, trapped by the whirlpool-thought of what those deaths must have been. But before he was swept entirely within its grip, a nightbird, pure black and untouched by gore, landed in front of him. It looked up at him, perfectly still, and somehow its gaze steadied him until he could muster his thoughts once more.

'An umbrar is a weapon of terror. To feel this fear is human, to surrender to it is defeat,' and he left one half of himself to mourn.

He needed to find Calre.

Grant and Isabelle had gone on, chasing the trail of Vasala who had pursued a runner. Grant hadn't known where Calre was, didn't know where to start, only that time was short for any who may yet live. Jack had bid them go, and entered the camp to solve the puzzle of where the noble had gone.

'No one on open ground will have survived to now, between the heat and the birds. Survivors, wounded, would have fled into the grass. They would need to be sheltered, shaded. They would have been running in a panic, in the dark, attacked by an unknown threat. Calre knows this, he searches where survivors could have persisted until now, not where they're most likely to be.'

Jack looked past the immediate presence of the hell before him and out into the plains surrounding the hill.

'We came from the south; ignore that region. East has a steep slope, too treacherous to navigate in the dark, too noisy. They're caught before they can get any distance. North then, on the far side of a hillock, shaded through most of the day,' Jack eliminated options, finally settling on a likely rise to the northwest, a few hundred meters from the base of the hill.

He ran, feeling guilt at the relief the distance from the massacre brought him. His legs ached still from the strain of his contribution to the push and pull of the carts, but he forced himself to ignore the weakness he felt. The fact that Calre hadn't returned meant he had found someone.

A hundred meters on he spotted broken blades of grass, crushed as if someone had fallen in their midst, stumbling in the dark in desperate flight. Smears of blood ran across patches. He intensified his pace, tapping into what reserves he had left.

Frustration at the uselessness of his cards dwelt in the back of his mind. A proper dash could have gotten him there in half the time.

Nearing his goal, he slowed, there was no trail to follow.

"Lord Calre?! Lord Calre!" he shouted desperately. He didn't have the wind to climb the hill, and choosing left or right wrongly would waste too much time.

Then, a shout from the left, source out of sight, words indiscernible.

Nestled in a small depression, the noble Calre hunched bloody over a pair of corpses. Up to his elbows was the glisten of fresh blood, becoming the dull brown of drying splatter elsewhere.

He held a short blade of pale-bone white, covered in blood. With a jerk of his hand, the fluid lost its hold on the strange metal of the tool, and it caught the light with a dazzling shimmer, clutched in a hand still stained in vital red.

"Sterilize them," he called over his shoulder to Jack, gesturing to a satchel lying nearby. The nearly instantaneous hesitation was too long as, exasperated, Calre continued tersely, "your hands. There's soap. Use the waterskin, and cleanse your hands. I may yet save them both if you don't dawdle like a fool."

Sudden understanding; they lived. The destruction of their form changed from a basic horror to one tinged with desperation—how could they possibly be saved?

Jack rushed to follow the noble's direction. The soap stunk and stung—its acrid intensity hopefully carrying potency as well. He made sure to bring the loathsome stuff up his arm to the elbow, taking the cue from Calre's stains. He came to Calre's side, still rinsing the last of the residue from his hands, ready for his next instructions.

The ensuing trial was a parade of curt instructions between periods of intensely focused silence. Jack applied pressure where told, fetched tools, and cleansed them between uses. Calre was a wonder to watch, even in the gruesome context. One of his cards seemed to allow him to undergo periods of accelerated movement, as his limbs would move faster and faster, racing through tasks with unbelievable control at the speeds he moved until the effect ended and he'd suddenly return to baseline until the card was replayed.

The realization that his limbs were occasionally skipping the intervening space when they moved from position to position, Jack could only take in stride as one more example of the power of noble cards. Even with the superhuman capacities he was revealing, they were only just managing to keep the pair before them alive. Calre had obviously drugged them with something, their heartbeats and breath so faint Jack couldn't blame himself for assuming the worst at first look, but it also slowed their bleeding to a point that Calre seemed to be making headway.

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The workmanlike manner of Calre helped him distance himself from the brutal nature of their task, as he was asked to hold torn tissue together for stitches, he could imagine himself helping his mother finish a design on a piece of clothing. The lies he told kept the panic he refused to allow himself in check, until they didn’t.

The first slip came when the pattern they'd established broke. They had swapped back and forth between patients at a ready rate, Jack realized a cycle of two minutes, enough for each to receive a full period of high-speed treatment. Following the rhythm, Jack readied himself to turn only for Calre to remain where he was.

"The other... shouldn't we?" Jack ventured.

"Can't keep up with both. Better to save one," the noble replied, frustration leaking into his voice.

Slowly, Jack turned away, knowing that this consigned the poor soul to die.

'Forgive me,' he thought, and in the redoubled efforts they made on the remaining survivor, he missed the moment the rise and fall of the abandoned one's chest ceased.

What seemed like hours later, but was really not even one, Calre finished his efforts.

The figure before them was heavily swaddled in bandages, had been stitched, anointed in balms until they stunk, and had one arm amputated at the elbow. The damage to their limbs had been undoubtedly intentional on the umbrar's part, tendons targeted specifically to cripple, before doling out gut wounds to give them a lingering death. The time they'd spent exposed to the elements, barely shaded, had taken their toll. Their tendons and muscles had been targeted by the umbrar, even if they pulled through in all likelihood they would never fully recover.

But even after all that they had lived long enough to receive help. Their chest rose and fell, and Jack couldn't help but feel that their success was one final defiance against the umbrar's cruelty.

Calre cleansed his hands and forearms slowly, meticulously. Jack carefully did not notice the tremble in the noble's hand when he received the soap and water.

Pretense has a way of dissolving in the face of shared efforts, as does propriety. Jack didn't so much forget his place, his role in the pantomime of their respective classes and his own ulterior motives, as much as he felt that the shackle they usually acted as didn't matter at all. That's the only explanation he would later give himself, for what he did next.

He stared at Calre, evaluating him openly. The noble sat sprawled in the grass, showing none of the poise he usually carried. He looked bedraggled, clothing in disarray and bloodstained, streaks of blood still on his face. Who was this southern noble that struggled to save the life of a common stranger? Who was this young man that looked back at Jack with an expression that, Jack could only surmise, mirrored his own.

Another time, Jack might have voiced those questions. Gone against all good sense and advice delivered to him and taken a risk on engaging with a noble of all people. But the memory of Stroph's turbulent behavior was fresh in his mind, and the doubts it brought of his own judgement of another's character.

So he looked away and let the moment pass. He didn't see the look of resignation flash over the noble's face, an expression permitted only as a self-indulgence, never for another.

By the time they acknowledged one another again, the forms of their respective classes once more overlaid their selves.

At Calre's direction Jack busied himself preparing a temporary campsite while Calre tended his restless nimble, they could not move the survivor in such a state and would need to settle there until the caravan came along. Mercifully, Calre made no effort to engage Jack in conversation once they had settled, and instead merely sat with his eyes closed in a peaceful repose.

It was evening when the other party found them, drawn in by the smoke of the fire Jack had started.

Isabelle was quick to attend to the bandaged figure, clearly finding solace in the existence of any survivor.

'They couldn't save anyone,' Jack realized, and felt marginally better for what he had undergone, as disturbing as it had been.

Grant clapped Jack on the shoulder and gave him a weary smile.

"It was well done there lad, well done."

Then he was off to consult with Calre, who sat calmly awaiting the arrival of his bondsman.

That left only Vasala, who kept herself distanced from the others.

The haunted look she carried was broken only by the sincere, weary smile as she realized that someone had lived through the umbrar’s massacre.

'She's of an age with Syra,' Jack suddenly realized.

The noble's airs and dress had kept him from the connection that she would have been a peer to his sister, but that flash of innocence cut through her fortress.

Jack's moment of silent empathy was broken by Isabelle's voice, raised with a tinge of concern.

"What method was used to slow the bleeding?"

She was holding open the eyelid of the survivor, staring intently while tilting their head and waving her hand over their face.

"Purified mud-root tincture," Calre answered, stepping closer to the crouched medic.

"Hmmm, and the time of dose?" Isabelle's nervousness around the nobles was superseded by the immediacy of necessary care.

"Four hours ago. We managed to seal most of the serious wounds before a second dose was required."

Isabelle looked increasingly on edge as she performed other diagnostic measures, there was a tension growing in her, an internal conflict she was struggling to resolve.

'There's another question she doesn't want to ask,' Jack realized.

He went to her and, leaning close, asked her what it was. She told him, stumbling over her words, and so carefully not looking up, she told him what she suspected and what she couldn't bring herself to ask Calre. Jack listened, and hearing her fears, felt the foreboding of wretched inevitability. When he turned to Calre and asked what she could not, he felt himself slipping away from his actions, becoming a passenger to events once more.

"Was the dose diluted, to account for the blood loss they had already incurred?"

Calre stilled. He closed his eyes, expression gone flat as if he concentrated on something outside of their understanding. Jack caught a flash of a grimace across his face, and then he opened his eyes, features impassive once more.

"I did not recall that instruction on its use…" he went silent for a moment, continuing only after an obvious effort of self-control, "they are... unrecoverable due to cerebral hypoxia then?"

Isabelle did not look up, "I believe it is so, lord."

There was little said after that, and whatever small hope they had disappeared when, even by the next morning, the survivor had failed to awaken.

Jack came to understand that the failure was doubly bitter for the nobility. They had passed near enough to the massacre to suspect something but had made the calculated move to pursue the umbrar instead. If they had chosen otherwise, many of the fallen could have been saved.

The only thing unclear to Jack was what had motivated that choice; a pragmatic gamble ill-made? Or hunger for the glory of slaying the umbrar, and perhaps... the card it might produce?