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A blustering, frigid wind blew over the taiga landscape. Trees rustled and snow whipped about the faces of the intrepid travelers who – all but for one – found the cold harsh, unrelenting, and chilling to the bone. They had made the necessary preparations, but the Grimrosi wilderness was pitiless to their grief; Tatsidi and Deventh walked closer to each other, hoping for some semblance of warmth far away from their respective homelands.
"We're almost there," Anna shouted over the wind, unfazed and smiling as if it were a sunny, pleasant day. "Only a mile or two left before we reach the fork. Hopefully we'll see the road marker through all this snow!"
In the moments following her declaration, the veil in front of them picked up a pinkish hue. Through the brass plating over his mask, Deventh found himself uncertain of the source of the sudden and distinct metallic tang which permeated his nose. He glanced at Tatsidi, who had pulled his own cloth mask over his maw.
Squinting as he created a shield with his hand over his forehead, the Apo'na growled in a soft rumble under his breath. He bemoaned his lack of preparation for tainted snow to enter his eyes. Inch by inch, as the group trudged forward, the pinkish tint intensified, the wind taunting them with its morbidly playful hint of what was to come.
Jessa, her forbearance up to that point as unrelenting as the storm, stopped in her tracks as the gust whipped splatters of reddened snow onto her blue cloak. Eyes squinted while staring downwind, she spotted a large object in the size and shape of a covered passenger wagon. It was only a few seconds before the others stopped as well, gazing out in the same direction.
"Looks like we'll be getting a head start on the job after all," said Deventh, just loud enough to carry his voice through the wind. "Should we have a look?"
"Is that what I think it is?" Jessa asked. Her eyes narrowed as she picked out person-sized heaps scattered around the presumed wagon. "And is that blood? What happened here?"
"Bandits, from the looks of it," said Anna as she trudged toward the shape, following the bare hint of wagon tracks. “Let’s take a look.”
"Might as well. Perhaps we shall find more gear with which to protect ourselves better from this cursed snow," Tatsidi said as he followed along. As the two went ahead, Jessa turned to Deventh, the apprehension in her eyes the only hint of emotion visible behind her own mask and hood.
"There's going to be no one left alive, isn't there?" Her voice shook, and she shuffled closer to him.
"I'd say it's unlikely that anyone who may have survived would have stuck around," said Deventh, confirming Jessa's fear with his unsettling equivocation. To avoid indulging her worrying any further, he shifted the topic to the immediate issue. "You said you have wards, right? Summons, as well? Be ready to use them. Stay behind Anna if it puts you at ease." His hand ready at his dagger, he awaited no response before stepping forward.
"Oh..." Jessa answered under her breath, though the wind prohibited it from reaching Deventh's ears. "All right.” I suppose this is reality, she thought as she followed Deventh, staying as close as she could.
An overturned cart came into focus as they approached, and the tinge of blood tickled their noses. Beyond that, a group of bodies lay, mangled and torn with daggers in hand and mouths agape, frozen in their final moments. Scattered around them were wooden crates and barrels, some intact while others appeared to have been cracked open during the bloodbath.
Jessa grew paler than her complexion would otherwise suggest was possible, and brought a hand to her mouth in shock.
"Oh, by the gods, this is terrible," she said, her voice cracking with distress. The initiative to investigate soon snapped her back to reality. Such encounters were exactly what she had signed up for, of course, but knowing that didn't alleviate the nausea that welled up within her.
“If it was bandits, they were unusually tidy,” Deventh said as he lifted the tops of crates, the contents of which were left entirely untouched. “Whoever was here, they weren’t interested in material possessions. At least not mundane ones.” He moved on to inspect the bodies. Anna followed suit, rummaging through her backpack.
Dizzy and struggling with the reality that people were capable of such cruel acts, Jessa trudged up to Deventh using every ounce of her willpower. She caught a glimpse of Tatsidi disappearing into the blizzard, his tail vanishing after him.
"Where is Tatsidi going?" she asked Deventh. He was crouched over the twisted, sprawled-out corpse of a male orc, examining the gushing hole in his abdomen and searching pockets and pouches. Jessa dared not look at the face. Once he completed his inspection, Deventh stood up, glancing in the direction of where he’d last seen Tatsidi.
"He's probably found something," he said, brushing his hands together to remove the bloodied snow from his gloves. "Stay here with Anna."
After watching him disappear the same as Tatsidi did, Jessa hurried to Anna, who had begun searching inside the cart. Her stomach turned, and she grew ever paler. Knowing it was still possible for each subsequent discovery to be worse than the last, she kept a safe distance where she couldn't see inside.
Turning over a blanket – one that appeared to have been a light green before being saturated with blood – Anna gasped. She retracted the top half of her body from the cart, and her head narrowly missed hitting the frame of the canopy. Her movements hurried, she threw the blanket to the ground, inciting Jessa to scurry over and see for herself what she'd found. Peering inside while Anna prepared herself to go back in, Jessa waited a moment for her eyes to adjust before realizing what prompted her to react with such exigency.
"He's breathing!" she cried, springing out of the way to let Anna tend to the lone survivor. A young man of perhaps twenty-five or so years, he bore the chiseled facial features and the thick, swarthy skin–albeit paled by blood loss–of an Esdathrin. Shallow and labored, his breath held him fast to what little life he had left to cling to in the throes of deep wounds and raw burns.
Life remained in spite of its fragility, though, and that alone was enough for Jessa. A rush of adrenaline surged through her veins, a wave of relief carrying her away from the precarious edge of consciousness. Anticipation overwhelmed her as she watched Anna work with urgency, the Helbrund's focus immovable from her effort to save the man from the brink of death.
Stolen story; please report.
"Find me some blankets and water. We need to warm him up," Anna ordered, sparing no time for explanations as she removed her gloves. Her hands glowed with a lustrous brilliance that shone through the snowy wind, infused with restorative magic which she used to begin healing a large gash in the man's chest. Though her magic was not quite powerful enough to heal such fatal wounds completely, she was able to lessen its depth to prevent further blood loss.
"A-all right!" Jessa said. Imbued with hope and uncertainty alike, she found a new determination not to fail on her first foray. She tore her eyes from the grisly sight and produced her canteen, which she handed to Anna. A moment’s inspiration led her to the idea of summoning help for her search. Palms held upward and fingers slightly curled, she whispered a short incantation.
A shimmering circle of magenta swirled up from the ground in front of her, growing as she closed her eyes to concentrate. Her hands trembled and her focus wavered, however, slowing the process and sending her into a spiral of worry that she was taking much too long. A series of crackles resounded. When she opened her eyes, the brilliant pink had darkened to a murky purple, emanating sparks that left smoke as they popped.
“Oh, no.”
By the time she had ceased channeling her energy, it was too late. The haze dissipated, falling to the feet of a rather unsightly little creature. An imp, just under two feet tall and humbled by no more than a loincloth, scratched at its snub nose with a set of jagged claws. A stubby pair of horns appeared to be sprouting from its forehead – as many times as she’d summoned the creature before, intentional or not, she had never seen it with such an attribute.
She looked back at Anna, who was too busy tending to her patient to pay any mind to the spectacle. In a panic, she tried to unsummon the imp before it could prance away to make trouble, but she found no success. To her surprise, however, it stood there, awaiting her command – something that often took at least twenty minutes of chasing to accomplish.
“You’ll do, then,” she said, pointing to the bags, crates, and barrels scattered around. “Blankets. You know that word, right? Look for blankets.”
The creature grunted its understanding and hopped away to begin its search. Jessa, too, set about looking for anything to use as an improvised blanket, be it leather, cloth, or otherwise. They checked every box and bag that had scattered and spilled around the cart until the imp happened upon one particular chest filled with fine goose down comforters.
"I found something!" Jessa announced, a dusty mist swelling from the fabric as she hauled as many of the comforters as her small frame could handle. Her summon reached the Helbrund first, however, clever enough to have figured out the situation. It passed to her a ragged linen sheet full of holes and riddled with questionable stains.
“Was this really all you could find?” Anna asked, turning around to look at the creature, which she had presumed was Jessa. Her body tensed and she instinctively reached for her ring. “Ardren’s holy pledge, what in every hell imaginable am I seeing?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Overwhelmed with the awkward size and weight of the blankets she held, Jessa stumbled in a deep spot of snow, dropping the entire stack as she fell to the ground. Anna rushed over to help her up.
“I’m sorry,” Jessa repeated as the Helbrund lifted her upright. “I meant to summon a sprite.”
“It is fine,” Anna said, helping her brush the snow off of her clothes. “Just put the damned thing away.”
The Helbrund took the blankets with haste and hurried back to her patient. The creature obliged Jessa’s next effort to unsummon it, and it vanished in the same murky haze from which it appeared. Relieved to have settled her embarrassing mishap, she returned to Anna to be ready should she need anything else.
Now sporting a bandage wrapped across his chest, the victim appeared to be as stabilized as Anna could manage, though his cleanly shaven face still shone stark white compared to the black of his hair. As the Helbrund adjusted him, lifting him up to check for more injuries, his hair moved aside to reveal a birthmark on the back of his neck. The shape resembled the footprint of a bird. Once certain she hadn’t missed anything, Anna used the blankets to swaddle him.
"With any luck he'll make it to Kho'Gul. I know a wonderful healer who can take care of him," Anna said with an appreciative nod. She tucked a blanket around the patient, ensuring he was settled, comfortable, and out of the path of the blistering wind. "Now, where did the other two go?"
"Oh, Tatsidi wandered off." Jessa snapped her attention to Anna. "Deventh went after him. Should we go after them, or should we wait here?" Anna's brow furrowed. A sigh escaped her as she considered Jessa's question. Despite decades of training, as well as firsthand experience with death and tending to the wounded, it never became easy for Anna to handle such situations with a level head; It was simply her duty. She took a step back and pointed around to the crates through which Jessa had just spent some time rummaging.
"Did you happen to see any rope?" She asked. Jessa's eyes sparked with initiative as she gave a series of short but firm nods. Matching Anna's urgency, she spun around and whisked over to one of the smaller crates. After reaching her arm inside, she snaked out a considerable length of unraveled rope.
With the rope coiled over one arm, Jessa made her way to Anna while eyeing two approaching silhouettes. The cat and elf had returned empty-handed from their jaunt away.
"So, where did the tracks lead? Were they rushed, slow, how many people were there?" Anna rolled through her list of usual questions as soon as Jessa had reached earshot, revealing that perhaps the two were not fruitless in their labors.
"The tracks split off into three different paths for a short distance," said Deventh. "Then they converged, ended with no trace; no blood, no bodies, nothing. Not sure if the storm might have covered the tracks, but I'm more inclined to believe it might have been teleportation." He shrugged, ruminating on the possibilities. "Did you two manage to find anything here?"
"No, other than this survivor we just finished patching up," Anna answered as she patted the blanket under which lay the victim of the attack. "We should get him to the city first. We'll worry later about coming back and seeing if there's anything we missed. At the very least we'll have a witness to whatever happened here."
Jessa stepped forward and, as she placed her rope in Anna's hand, she chimed in. "What happens if it turns out he's one of the people who attacked the wagon?" Although she asked, she didn't want to believe the thought that had sprung into her head.
"Well, he's in no shape to try anything in any way we can't handle. If that turns out to be the case, perhaps we can get some answers from him later," Deventh said.
Anna set the rope on the ground and twisted the ring on her left middle finger. An aura of golden brilliance manifested over her forearm like a halo. Motes of light coalesced into shape until her shield materialized. Adorned with floral embossing, the large golden circle shone with the radiance of the sun. Its steel trim slowly darkened to a cobalt blue. Jessa was speechless; she'd heard of enchantments that could recall arms and equipment and knew others who could summon magical versions of them, but she had never seen it in person. A sudden chilling wind left her moment of wonder bleak and fleeting.
Having placed the shield face-down on the ground to create a curved sled, Anna stooped back into the cart. She reached out and took hold of the swaddled young man, only struggling minutely against her strength due to the awkward positioning. Still, she managed to carry him out draped across her arms. Though Anna was in extraordinary shape, it took her a moment to correct herself upright. Years of stress from heavy armor on her joints had caught up to her at the age of forty-two.
Placing the man on the back of her shield, Anna nodded in acknowledgment of Deventh's answer. "Maybe he'll be kind enough to tell us what happened here. Now, let's head out before he succumbs to the weather." The Helbrund lashed and knotted the rope to her shield's handle with a loop, creating a lead. With a quick smile, she acknowledged Jessa as she threw the rope over her shoulder.
Anna moved out, dragging her shield behind her. Deventh caught up with a brisk walk to travel beside her, which signaled Tatsidi to follow, Frozen in a daze, Jessa hung back, exhausted in mind and body with no time to recover from what she had witnessed. But she was soon left with no choice but to keep up. As a sharp inhale stung her nose with crisp, wintry air, she dashed toward the group.