"...Mother of Lilith.."

The green cloaked {Scout} breathed in a hiss, crouching low in a panic as the sight of utter carnage met his eyes. Blood and severed limbs were strewn acrost the forest for more than fifteen meters, equipment shattered and strewn throughout, and an entire oak had been splintered into firewood.

"Kiiro, you have to look at this."

He called over her shoulder with a hushed breath, flinching and casting a backwards glare at the sound of clumsily trampled underbrush.

"Ugh, what is that smell?" The {Fighter} in question fussed, causing his companion to snap back.

"Quiet! Get over here, look."

"What the–" Kiiro began his exclamation just a bit too loud.

"--Shhh!"

The {Scout} grabbed the larger man and covered his mouth, pulling him down into a kneel as his head swiveled worriedly around the forest. Both men’s expressions grew dark as they surveyed the scene, and the {Fighter} took on a far more serious demeanor as the {Scout} spoke again.

"Whatever did this could still be nearby."

"What even could do this..?"

"I don't know, but we don't want anything to do with it."

"Tch.." Kiiro clicked his tongue, looking both worried and frustrated.

It was a loss on two fronts for the small adventuring group. Circumstances had plummeted with one thing after the other since they had set out for this region, and picking off members of the gnollish warband had become their only source of income for weeks. Now, after everything, they had to return and tell the encampment that something capable of shredding the entire pack into mincemeat was lurking in the woods? He didn't relish that idea at all.

"I don't like this…"

"You think I do?" Aaron, the {Scout}, retorted bluntly.

His sharp hazel eyes narrowed as he surveyed the bloody mess once more. Amongst the otherwise crude equipment, a gleaming silver heater shield caught his eye where it was embedded in the trunk of a tree. There were other factors which didn't make sense the longer he looked at them, some injuries were brutal whilst others were impeccably clean, but most of all–

"I don't see the Matriarch anywhere…"

"Guys!" A sudden, feminine cry went up from the trees nearby, and both men shot to their feet with weapons in hand.

"Sylien!"

The two broke into a rush, heading straight for the panicked voice of their third team member. Confusion filled their faces as they broke through the clearing to find her alone, standing over something as her hands trembled upon her staff.

"What? What is it?!"

Aaron pushed for details as he drew back an arrow, already transitioning back into scanning the surrounding woods for a potential threat. Kiiro moved up to the {Sorceress}, eyes widening as he saw what she was staring at.

A small elvish woman with gentle blonde hair, soaked to the bone with blood. She lay curled in the fetal position at the foot of a tree, hands clasped around a gaping hole in the stomach of her simple combat leathers, an arrow protruding from her shoulder… And there, not six feet away, was the headless body of the Matriarch.

"Is.. Is she..?" Sylien's voice quivered, and she did not finish the question.

"No, she's breathing."

Kiiro responded after briefly holding his hand above the woman's nose and mouth. The breaths were shallow and irregular, but she hadn't given up the fight. He watched as her slender frame rose and fell, struck with an odd sense of serenity despite the heavy stench of blood which filled the air around her.

Upon hearing the woman was alive Sylien's cheeks immediately regained some amount of colour, seeming newly focused as she knelt quickly over the elf and signed the command for [Mend]. It was a painfully low-tier healing art, but it was all she had, and surely it was better than nothing. Aaron made his approach once he was certain they would not be ambushed, looking down at the two girls with a frown fixed acrost his face.

"No way she did all this… Right?" He fished for confirmation– his frown deepening when Kiiro didn't immediately agree.

"There’s no way." He reasserted himself, eying what looked to be a bloodstained rock embedded halfway through a nearby tree.

"How else do you explain it, then?" The {Fighter} retorted.

“If it was some other monster, maybe she got caught up in the battle? Lost consciousness and got overlooked amongst the bodies, or maybe played dead?"

Kiiro snorted, but said nothing else, instead watching Sylien as she worked. The half-elf’s channeled energies flowed through her unconscious elven patient, and though the rhythm of the her breathing began to stabilize, she showed no signs of waking. Carefully Sylien loosened the rigging around the shoulder of Estelle’s combat leathers, pulling slack into the straps as she tried to assess the depth of the gnollish arrow’s penetration. Glancing back at her companions, she indicated for the men to look away with a slight flick of her wrist, giving them stern looks before peeling back the blood-soaked layers of Estelle’s clothing.

Once she was confident that the arrow was not so deep that pulling it out would cause more harm than good, Sylien applied firm pressure around the wound, cupping it in the curve of one hand between index finger and thumb before slowly removing the projectile with her other. There was a slight sound of suction and a spurt of blood as the rough-hewn arrowhead tore the flesh where it had practically healed around the shaft, and the half-elven {Sorceress} quickly slid the thumb of the hand applying pressure into the newly opened hole.

“Kevir.”

She breathed lightly, needing only the cardinal name for her art. [Mend] was nothing special in the world of healing, but it was widely employed by those without specialization. A subtype of ‘general’ art not directly affiliated with the Aspect of Light, it had been known to appear in pathways stemming from both the Arcane and Spiritual aspects– and occasionally even nature oriented Elemental paths– granting accessibility to far more users.

This did of course mean that it fell largely short when compared to something like [Lay on Hands] in terms of potency, but that simply was the way of things. There was also the counter-point which could be made for the fact that [Mend] was self-targetable, which most non-regeneration healing arts were not. Sylien frowned absently as she tried to focus on her arts, recasting as necessary while occasionally thumbing the wound she was attempting to seal. Her mottled gray eyes sank over the elf’s figure, noticing a strange pattern of scarring just below the hole in her shoulder.

Curiosity got the better of her and she lightly pulled back upon the red soaked cotton garment, revealing what could only be described as an unnaturally immaculate brand. The slightly raised tissue was pale and smooth, a circular boundary containing a rose eclipsing a crown. Sylien tipped her head with a slight hum, not recognizing the symbol, before yet another oddity caught her attention. Further down, almost further than she could reveal whilst still preserving the unconscious woman’s modesty, a tell-tale glint of colour flickered ominously.

The dark, inky purple shifted as the {Sorceress} stared, her throat suddenly dry. It was an unfair response, she knew, but instinctive nonetheless. Even if Sylien was not actively prejudiced against the marked, it was still slightly unsettling to have one just beneath her fingertips. Hesitantly, tentatively, she uncovered the marking.

Sylien's soft gasp urged both men to look back despite themselves, their gazes falling upon the swirling black and violet 'ink'. The colours within the tattoo-esque symbols shone and moved with a life of their own, coalescing neatly within their imprinted lines. A silhouette of a wolf’s head wreathed with a five-point iron band, a third eye open in the center of its brow.

"Isn't that… Isenhart's mark?" Aaron asked.

"The old-world God of Combat?" Kiiro questioned in return.

"Yeah, you know, from the stories. The one who came here as a mortal, and trained Lilith."

Sylvien cleared her throat loudly, and both men turned their eyes back to the forest. She watched them with a stern gaze before turning back to her work, finally sealing the hole enough to staunch any further bleeding. Shifting the woman’s clothing and equipment back into place, she sighed and sat back.

“What do we do now?” She asked, looking to the black haired {Fighter}.

The large man’s brow furrowed as he considered their options, surveying the landscape a final time before looking back to his party members and their unconscious addition.

“We’ll take her back to the encampment, for now. First things first though. Aaron?”

“Hm?”

“You’re on argonite. Sylien– take my pack and gather up anything that might fetch a coin or two, even if Jorin just melts it down for the iron. I’ll carry the elf.”

With the orders given, the group wasted no time setting about their taskings. Aaron’s knife work was clean and precise, and he finished retrieving the shards even before Sylien had finished gathering up pieces of salvage. Kiiro watched the {Scout} move to assist their {Sorceress} with the final pieces, heading towards the edge of the clearing himself whilst holding Estelle’s limp body as though she weighed nothing. The other two caught up to him shortly, and they proceeded back the way they had come.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

*****

Estelle awoke to the sounds of horses pawing the ground and the distant ring of an anvil, disorienting the {Crusader} immediately as her senses returned. She sat bolt upright and looked around, her hand immediately falling towards where her sword should have been despite its absence. Her missing weapon synced up with her memories of the previous fight, but her new surroundings did not.

Finding herself not in the forest, but inside a large canvas tent shaped square like a single room, her eyes settled on two people who had been having a conversation at a crude table nearby. The figures, a tall black-haired man and an almost equally tall woman both startled at her sudden awakening, looking over at her in surprise and raising their hands in calming gestures.

“Whoah, easy. Everything’s fine.” The man spoke, and the woman nodded.

“My names Kiirodorn, just Kiiro for most, and I’m no enemy of yours. This is Sylien, one of my party members. Our third, a {Scout} named Aaron, is currently away.”

He introduced them simply, and Estelle nodded to show she was following.

“In that case, I imagine thanks are in order. You must have found me in the woods.”

“Aye,” Kiiro started, folding his arms over his chest as he watched Sylien maneuver through the tent to procure a wooden mug, using [Create Water] to fill the same before offering it to Estelle.

“We found you soaked crimson, up to your neck in gnoll bits with an arrow stuck in your shoulder for good measure, out like the dead. Quite a surprise when you weren’t, really. Dead I mean.”

Estelle nodded again, her hand subconsciously raising to where the arrow had been. She gratefully accepted the water from Sylien and drank most of it in a single gulp, saving only a small amount which she then swished around her mouth before swallowing. Kiiro watched her carefully, waiting to see if she’d add anything before leaning forward with a sigh.

“Care to tell how that all came to be?” He pressed, eying the {Crusader} with a slight frown.

“Kiiro, it can wait a moment, surely?” Sylien interjected from the side. Estelle raised a hand to signal it was fine.

“It was little more than a random encounter, in truth. I was traversing the Spine eastward towards Tenebris when I crossed that warband.”

The {Crusader} explained. She had been making good time, too, stopping very little for rest whilst practically running through the mountains. Maintaining a controlled jog for most of the ground she had covered since leaving Thrylld.

“And you.. Cleared them out?”

Estelle nodded again, though misunderstanding the context of the question. In her mind it was framed as more of a ‘why’, given that she had ignored or avoided most other creatures she encountered in the interest of covering more ground. Why had she taken the time and the risk to engage the gnolls?

“I could not in good conscience allow void-touched creatures to roam the mainland, never mind those as aggressive as gnolls.” She answered simply, blinking as Kiiro only stared at her.

“I.. Apologize, if I overstepped? It was not my intention to encroach upon any contracts you may have been pursuing.”

Sylien shook her head at that, coming back to Estelle’s bedside with a plate of easy to prepare camp food; pieces of toasted bread with cheese and a bowl of mystery stew. She handed it to the {Crusader} as she spoke.

“That’s not what he means, ah.. I didn’t catch your name?”

“Estelle. Thank you, I apologize for not offering an introduction sooner.”

“Estelle. No worries at all, but as I was saying– what I think Kiiro is asking is whether or not you did all that yourself? There had to be over a dozen gnolls in that warband, and some of them were pretty brutally killed. If there was another monster involved we definitely need to know.”

Looking from Sylien to Kiiro, Estelle watched the man for confirmation. He offered a slight nod, though his expression remained forcibly neutral as he sat with his arms still crossed.

“There were no other creatures which I could sense or identify. As for the maimings, I imagine most cases would have been the gnolls subjected to fratricide by their Matriarch’s aggression.”

“So you did do all that.” Kiiro stated, eyes not leaving Estelle.

“Yes?”

“Hah!”

The man’s gold-amber eyes suddenly brightened, and he slapped his knee roughly as a wide grin spread acrost his face.

“You hear that Aaron? Get in here, I know you’re listening.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The {Scout} huffed, emerging from where he had been lurking just beyond the tent’s entrance. Without any need for further goading, he dipped a hand into his satchel and flipped a coin over to Kiiro.

“I’m more concerned with what she said before that, though.”

Aaron turned his attention towards the {Crusader}, patiently waiting for her to finish chewing her mouthful of toast before continuing on with what he meant.

“Did you say void-touched? Does that mean what I think it means?” He hesitated, adding on;

“And if it does– isn’t that… Well, really fucking bad?”

Sylien gave him a scowl at the curse, but the {Scout} shrugged his shoulders indifferently. Kiiro’s face returned to neutrality as he also turned his attention back to Estelle, waiting for her answer. The {Crusader} paused for a moment, taken aback by the line of questioning before reminding herself at length where she actually was. She was not in the depths of the riftlands surrounded by other Endwalkers, she was in mainland Orodae; and these people were everyday adventurers. It was more than fair for them to be confused. She was the strange one.

Keeping that in mind, she took the time to assess each of them in turn. Kiirodorn the {Fighter}, with his unkempt black hair and wild eyes like golden honey, practically towered above everyone in the tent even whilst sitting down. He was level fourteen.

The {Scout}, Aaron, had chocolate brown hair short-cropped and styled neatly. Almost militantly, Estelle noted, a professional sort of look which suited the sharpness to his hazel eyes. He was short– Though not so short as Estelle– but well built, with a compact frame that surely leant itself well to traversing the woodlands and wilds. Level eleven.

And finally Sylien, the tall and slender half-elf with speckled gray irises and long auburn hair. Her fair features and finely tipped ears betrayed her lineage despite her darker skin, a rich island tan by human standards, which was extreme by elven metrics. She was a {Sorceress}, at level nine.

All things considered, they were… Surprisingly weak. They did not appear particularly green to Estelle, yet their levels were indicative of an adventuring party that had just started out rather than an established group, even if Kiiro was bordering on the upper limit of what could be considered amateur. Concealing her frown, the {Crusader} gently rested her half eaten bowl of stew in her lap and looked back at Aaron.

“For the sake of clarity I will ask first; What exactly do you believe it means?”

“Well, when people reference the ‘void’ in that way, they typically mean the.. God? Monster? Whatever fucked up thing tore the seven realities apart and manifested the rifts to begin with.” He paused momentarily, biting his lip as though hesitant to say the rest.

“So… For a thing to be ‘void-touched’, I mean.. Clearly they weren’t horrors, but were they just a step short? Were they going to become something like that?”

Estelle took a slow breath, weighing her words momentarily before shaking her head.

“Not exactly.”

The three party members each looked relieved, until the {Crusader} continued on.

“However. The void in reference is indeed the very same force to which you alluded, the destroyer and consumer of worlds. While creatures affected by its lingering influence are not liable to mutate into the entities we call ‘horrors’, they are nonetheless extremely dangerous… And perhaps more importantly, volatile.”

“Meaning?” Sylien pressed with a worried frown.

“They’re not explosive or some nonsense, surely?” Kiiro scoffed with a joking tone, clearly in an attempt to brush aside some of the heavy air.

“Yes and no.” Estelle responded, causing his attempt at downplaying the explanation to fall flat.

“A void-touched creature is, quite literally, one that has been touched by the Aspect of Chaos in an unnaturally direct way. This contact tears the essence of their aetherial channels, permanently altering them, disfiguring their natural aspects and granting unnatural abilities. The empowerment a creature receives from this is troubling in its own right– but the real danger stems from leaving them alone.”

She halted her explanation to allow her company to process it, proceeding once it seemed they had sufficiently steeled themselves.

“By ‘volatile’; I mean that their damaged aether is constantly degrading, destabilizing inside of them. The more they obtain the more intensely it corrupts, until eventually the very essence of their being collapses upon itself… And in most cases, opens a rift.”

Kiirodorn and Aaron both cursed– the former making a religious gesture as he did so– and Sylien abruptly sat down upon a nearby chair, mouth slightly open and eyes wide. Estelle watched them solemnly, waiting for them to come to terms with the information before attempting to offer what little silver lining she could.

“Granted, a rift formed in this manner will burn out on its own, or can otherwise be easily sealed, but until then it will siphon the life out of the world around it and unleash its depraved spawn into existence. Limited or not, rifts and horrors lead directly to corruption– and more void-touched creatures– which in turn results in more rifts and horrors. It is a devastatingly effective method of self propagation, and as such it is crucial to eliminate these creatures before they self-destruct and take a piece of reality with them.”

“...How does something like that start? How did we end up with void-touched gnolls in the first place?” Aaron asked, fidgeting with one of the buttons on his tunic as he tapped the toe of his boot uncomfortably against the ground.

“That I cannot say. Once the rifts were suppressed to the far north such things became rare upon the mainland, as typically it requires the monster in question be caught within a portion of destabilized reality or to be corrupted directly by a primogen.”

“A primogen?” Sylien queried.

“An elder variant of horror capable of creating other horrors, amongst other things.”

“Well that’s great. Wonderful.” Kiiro exclaimed, thumping a fist against his thigh. “So you’re saying we’ve got some sort of timeless abomination lurking out there in the woods, turning monsters into spatial time bombs?”

“Absolutely not.” Estelle responded with a resolute shake of her head.

“Then how?” Aaron countered exasperatedly.

“I do not know, but I promise you that it was not the work of a primogenitor.”

“Why not?” Kiiro asked.

“Because this forest is still a forest, and not a desert, or an icecap. Because the very ground upon which we stand has not churned into something different altogether five separate times during the span of our conversation.” Estelle said curtly, picking back up her bowl of stew.

“Also because I would feel it, if it were. Chaos of that magnitude would have called to me.”

“I don’t… Exactly like how that sounds.” Aaron commented slowly, giving the {Crusader} a skeptically side-eyed look which she ignored entirely, going back to eating the last of her meal. Kiiro appeared nonplussed, but also unconvinced.

“What about inside a dungeon? Could a.. Prima-janitor-whatsit.. Pop up in one of those? Would you be able to feel it if it did?”

Estelle tipped her bowl to her lips, polishing off the last drips of stew before setting the dish aside and turning her attention back to the black-haired {Fighter}. The answer was yes– of course she would– but now she had questions of her own. And so, instead of answering, she asked;

“Is there a dungeon here?”

All three party members nodded.