“Ba…bastard,” the word bubbled from Jairus’ lips.

Thin eyebrows rose. “It speaks,” the dark man said in mock surprise. “This is a wonder of wonders, is it not? A talking dog!”

“This cur had best speak on command,” the woman growled. “Your sentries would not quit battle long enough to share your secrets…commendable, but foolish.”

“H-how?” the lycanthrope gasped. “How did you find us?”

The robed man chuckled. “A clever spot; far enough from road and river that no one would think to search here in this bleak season. But it was your young friends, the Ameldan dog and his pup, that gave you away with their oh-so-dubious tale of hunting in these mountains. So, we thought to look here. And then the stars smiled upon us and we saw your watch-fires.”

The hunt-leader’s teeth clenched so tightly that they creaked in his maw. Those two prattling fools! Years of secrecy spoiled by two witless buffoons!

The southland wizard dropped to a crouch before him.

“Truly, the way we found you is of no matter. What matters is that your ilk took a friend of ours.” He raised a hand with palm facing the earth as though indicating someone’s height. “She stands about so high. Easy to miss at first, yet notable.”

He leaned toward the broken man. “Where do you keep her?”

The hunt-leader snarled. “Filthy wretch, You can’t intimida-”

Slap.

The stranger drove his palm into the smaller man’s head, stinging his cheek.

“Do not quarrel with me.” His countenance sharpened to obsidian wrath. “I can follow your tracks.” He gestured to the hoof prints in the snow. “But I do not know what I would find: where would we search for our friend? How many of you are there? These questions, my enemy, you must answer.”

He raised his hand and balled it into a fist. A shining ring flared with white light and searing death. “Or I shall lay a curse upon your body that would make a demon beg for oblivion.”

“And I-” the woman flexed her hand.

Hssssss.

Golden witch-light played about her gauntlet, emitting an ethereal vitriol. Jairus’ nose wrinkled at the burning aroma. “-shall lay Amitiyah’s tears upon you. I doubt they will be kind to one such as you: a predator who feasts upon the weak. Save yourself this burden. Denounce the filth and tell us of your lair.”

Spft.

Jairus spit blood at their feet. “May Lycundar eat your souls!” he choked out.

Scrnch.

His body had nearly reformed, and he was able to raise his head and toss his hate into their teeth. “Burn me! Curse me! Kill me! I will endure in silence until you slay me and await you in the after-world! I will be the wolf that hunts your spirits and catches them for my god!” He gave a choked laugh. “I’ll laugh as his twelve heads rip your screaming souls apart! That will be true torment! Nothing you can do can get me to speak!”

“Then perhaps I could be of service.”

A cultured voice slipped through the shadows behind Jairus.

Both warriors startled, snatching their weapons. The Sengezian’s crimson eyes grew wide. “Jeva?!” he leapt to his feet. “But…when…how did you?”

“Forgiveness, Master Kyembe.”

A mounted man rode into Jairus’ view astride a mare of iron-black shade. Grey touched his hair and neat beard, but his back was as straight as a knife, and he dismounted with the fluidity of youth. “I have found that one can far more easily approach friend or foe when either is distracted.”

“Why are you here, Jeva?” the woman put up her visor, revealing a confused look beneath her freckles.

“It was uncouth to follow you: I most humbly beg your forgiveness.” He bowed deeply, his black leather gloves creaking as he drew a dark satchel from his saddle. “But I hold a responsibility as Paradise’s seneschal - to see that justice is obtained to the best of my ability. It would be most unseemly to leave such a task in the hands of our guests alone.”

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Crnch. Crnch. Crnch.

He approached, looking down upon Jairus as though the werewolf were filth dropped from the back end of a horse. “If you would be so kind as to leave this man to me, Master Kyembe and Saint Cristabel, I shall ferret out what you need.”

The armoured woman blinked. “You believe you can make him speak?”

“There are ways,” the seneschal’s voice was iron-hard, and his carefully cultivated accent slipped into something far rougher.

“How?”

Jeva gave her a look, falling to one knee and unravelling the ties of his satchel. “When you reach my age, you will find that one can live many lives over the years, my dear Saint. …perhaps you can sympathize, in a sense, if the stories of your death are true.”

The last tie came undone.

“In my current life, I am seneschal to The Lovers’ Paradise. But I was not always so.”

He drew the satchel open and carefully slid out the contents. His countenance darkened.

“Not always.”

Three gasps sounded through the clearing.

Pressed into a wooden board - covered in felt dyed black - were a set of tools maintained to impeccable shine as though they were an aristocrat’s prized jewels.

Yet, these were no delicate gems, nor did they hold the burnished polish of bronze or gold.

These bore the cold light of steel.

And they were cast into the cruelest shapes.

Some curved into hooks that could pry open the lid of an eye, while others were narrow and shaped to stab beneath the nail of finger or toe. A delicate bone saw lay beside several fine knives that could peel flesh as though it were the skin of a rotten fruit. Others seemed to have no obvious purpose: strangely shaped orbs, twisted clamps and thick, powerful pliers.

And needles. Dozens of steel needles.

Other objects were strewn carelessly among the torturer’s tools, far more mundane but of far greater dread for Jairus: forks, clasps, jewelry-pins, table knives and coins ablated to a razor edge. The shine of silver lay upon them all.

Kyembe stared at the equipment with mouth agape. “What is this, Jeva? What were you, and how did you come upon such steel-craft?”

Jeva began to organize the silver assortment while reaching into his dark tunic. “I made them, Master Kyembe.”

Both the wizard and the saint froze. “You…” Kyembe murmured in awe. “You are one of them?”

“Indeed.” He drew an object from his fine shirt: a piece of lodestone dancing amid a loop of twine - tiny flecks of metal were pressed to it like an iron cocoon.

“The…the Cult of Steel?” Jairus choked incredulously. “You are of the Cult of Steel?”

“In another life,” the older man drew a heavy length of steel chain, which he had wrapped in silver wire. It gleamed like an executioner’s blade. “But our lives tend to bleed together, as a mother’s blood may pass to son or daughter. Or how the iron of blood lives in us all.”

Deftly, Jeva seized the hunt-leader’s spasming limbs and bound ankles to wrists with the silver-sheathed chain. As he tightened the loop with a steel clamp, the two warriors grimaced.

“Are…” St. Cristabel murmured in unease. “Is this of necessity?”

“You wish to find your friend alive, do you not? Then there is little time to waste and you must know where she is kept if you wish the greatest chance of success. And this wolf-devil is strong-willed,” Jeva finished tightening the clamp, which clicked like the barring of hell’s gates. “But my skills are honed to unravel such things. Although…” He clinically eyed Jairus’ regenerating form. “I have never worked with a body that heals so quickly.”

Clnk.

He took up a silver fork and eyed the hunt-leader’s fingernails.

“I will need to experiment. Unfortunately, it will likely create a dreadful mess.”

His tone never changed; it was as though he were speaking about wringing a piece of metal into shape.

Jairus knew then that he would not die well.

“I…cannot watch this.” Kyembe made a face and stepped toward the trees. “Wizardry would have been cruel as well…but cleaner. Do what you must.”

St. Cristabel paused in indecision, her eyes drifting between the hunt-leader and the golden witch-light in her hand. She breathed in its vitriol, and her gaze cast to the sky. “Amitiyah forgive me; I shall let you work your craft, Jeva. These beasts need be purged and we must know the defences of their den.”

She stepped away. “May steel and your gods find worth in what you do.”

Crnch. Crnch.

She followed the dark man into the snow.

Choked laughter bubbled from Jairus’ bloody lips. “Even slayers have scruples, it seems! Cowards! Hypocrites! You threaten me with wizardry and then wince at this!? You are hypocrites!”

St. Cristabel paused, looking back. Her lips tightened, and she looked upon the light playing about her gauntlet. “…perhaps,” was all she said.

With that, she disappeared into the trees.

A silence followed, only broken by the clink of the seneschal’s tools.

“…I do believe we are all hypocrites in this.” Jeva drew a hook from his satchel. “But perhaps any who deal death and pain must be.” He gestured to the two warriors. “You call them such for their actions here.” He pointed to Jairus. “Yet you are such yourself: you feast on men and women, yet grow incensed when one pays a cruelty to you in turn.”

The seneschal gestured to himself, his black glove creaking. “And I am guilty of hypocrisy as well; the actions of your cult have caused me terrible distress. So much so that - once we are done here - I shall fetch some old friends of steel to find your little clutch of hounds and snuff if from this earth. You violated my Paradise, and yet, do I have the right to judge your actions? I am not without crime, after all: think of what I am about to work upon you.”

He sighed, extending the steel hook and silver fork.

Both grew in the hunt-leader’s widening eyes.

“Best not to think of such things,” Jeva murmured. “After all, no matter how much we change or how much we run…in the end, we are who we are.”

Silver and steel grew to consume Jairus’ vision.

Schnk.

And then there was only pain.