They pressed on, leaving the bloody wagon of roses behind.
The trail sloped downward, leading straight into the embrace of the sweet, suffocating mist.
The silence around them grew deafening, broken only by the soft clatter of Duria’s lamellar armor and the ragged breathing of Figi as he stubbornly battled the phantom swell of the earth.
The road to Silent Bliss wound through a dense, dreary woodland, where the crowns of ancient trees wove together above the trail, forming a natural tunnel where the sunlight died long before it could touch the ground.
It was the perfect place for an ambush.
And naturally, the Outcasts didn’t have to wait long.
They emerged from the shadows slowly, blocking the path with a fallen trunk they must have hauled there with considerable effort.
There were twenty of them in total; a motley assortment of deserters, murderers, and scum who fancied themselves robber knights.
Clad in rusted iron plates, they were a vile crew: men with scarred faces, drooling half-orcs, and even a few malicious gnomes armed with crossbows, looking like spiteful garden ornaments that had taken up highway robbery.
Towering over the rabble was a massive ogre, casually wielding a cudgel studded with iron spikes the size of a man’s thumb.
Their leader, a hulking brute in armor that had seen its glory days long before Lengos’s grandfather was born, stepped forward.
The visor of his helm had been torn off, exposing a face severely pockmarked by disease and cheap tavern brawls.
His breath reeked of sour wine and rot.
He spat with deliberate insolence.
A thick, yellowish glob of phlegm landed on the polished but weather-beaten leather of the paladin’s boot.
“Toll,” he growled.
His hand, caked in grease and dried blood, came to rest on the haft of a rusted morningstar.
His beady, darting eyes swept over the crew, appraising their gear, before finally locking onto Neira.
He licked his chapped lips in a way that made the priestess instinctively shrink behind her commander’s broad back, repulsed by the sticky weight of his gaze.
“Gold, valuables…
and that little horned beauty,” he added with a lecherous smirk, pointing at her with his chin.”And you lot?
You might survive.
If you play nice and run away real fast.”
Lengos let out a sigh.
It was the weary exhale of a man who had witnessed entirely too much stupidity in the world and lacked the energy to deliver yet another lesson in basic manners.
He didn’t reach for his blade.
He didn’t even twitch, ignoring the filth on his boot.
His stillness was far heavier, and infinitely more terrifying, than the thick armor he wore.
“Step aside.
We are pressed for time.”
The bandit narrowed his eyes, fatally misinterpreting this quiet calm for fear.
He grinned widely, revealing black stumps of teeth that looked like a burnt forest.
“Wrong answer, tin man,” he cackled.”Very wrong.” He raised his hand, signaling his men.”Take ’em!
And save the horned one for me!”
The horde charged with a savage roar that scattered birds for a mile around.
The bandit leader swung his morningstar, aiming straight for the paladin’s head.
The spiked steel ball plummeted with enough force to shatter stone, but Lengos raised his shield at the very last moment.
CLANG!
The impact echoed like thunder, but the paladin stood as immovable as a cliff face breaking the tide.
Using the fierce recoil of his opponent’s weapon, Lengos launched his counterattack.
His bastard sword flashed twice in the air, carving a perfect, gleaming cross into the attacker’s chest.
The rusted armor cracked like an eggshell, blood sprayed, and the robber knight fell to his knees, dead before his mind could even comprehend it.
Nearby, Duria was dancing with death.
A towering half-orc swung his axe at her, banking on brute strength to crush the petite woman.
He miscalculated terribly.
She swayed aside with the effortless grace of a ballet dancer, letting the blade pass a hair’s breadth from her nose.
“Osoi!
(Too slow!)” she laughed, her amusement as sharp as shattered glass.
In that same heartbeat, her katana and wakizashi sang their deadly duet.”Too slow, ugly,” she whispered.
Two lightning-fast strikes followed.
The half-orc roared in agony as both his hands; still white-knuckling the axe handle; plopped into the mud, severed from his wrists with surgical precision.
Duria vaulted over her maimed foe, already hunting for her next victim.”Sayonara, (Goodbye,) little hands!”
Perval found himself surrounded by three thugs.
He carried no weapons; his skin gleamed with sweat, putting his impressive map of scars on full display.
For the monk, his entire body was a weapon.
When the first bandit thrust a spear, Perval deflected the wooden shaft with his forearm, closed the distance in a flash, and drove an open palm into the attacker’s elbow.
The sickening crunch of snapping bone rang out louder than the clash of steel.
Pivoting on his heel, he swept the legs of the second thug, then delivered a devastating kick to the third man’s knee, sending him to the dirt and bending the joint at a horrifyingly unnatural angle.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” he laughed, planting a bare foot on the chest of the groaning bandit and flexing his muscles as if posing for a sculptor.”A little discipline, please!
Form a line!
Everyone will get their fair ration of pain!”
A deafening gunshot rang out from the rear.
One of the gnomes, who had been trying to sneak up on Neira with a dagger, suddenly shrieked and toppled over, clutching his shattered thigh.
Figlin blew the smoke from the barrel of his flintlock pistol without even bothering to look at his target.
“Sit!” the dwarf barked, pressing the ear trumpet to his head to ensure the gnome’s wailing had ceased.”The adults are talking!
Keep it down over there, or I’ll shoot the other one!”
But the absolute zenith of chaos unfolded wherever Zedora stood.
The ogre, witnessing the butchery of his comrades, charged at the barbarian, bellowing furiously and raising his gigantic weapon high.
The ground quaked beneath his strides.
The woman didn’t yield a single inch.
Her eyes flared with the very same primal frenzy she unleashed upon anyone foolish enough to stand in her way.
She dived straight under the ogre’s sweeping strike, sliding through the mud to launch her attack from beneath.
Her twin axes worked like a meat grinder.
The first vicious cleave severed the monster’s hamstring, forcing it down to one knee.
The second, delivered with the momentum of a full spin, bit deep into his spine between the shoulder blades, completely severing the spinal cord.
The third and final blow came crashing down on his thick neck.
The ogre’s head went rolling through the blood-spattered grass, and his colossal body collapsed, crushing two deeply unfortunate gnomes beneath its bulk.
Zedora shook the gore from her skin and spat on the carcass.
“Too much fat, not enough muscle,” she evaluated with sheer disgust.
Witnessing the unceremonious death of their ‘champion’ and the massacre of their comrades, the surviving bandits dropped their weapons and bolted for the treeline.
They sprinted wildly, tripping over exposed roots, desperate to get as far away as possible from these monsters wearing human skin.
“Fleeing?” Yerga, who had spent the skirmish standing idly in the back, adjusting the fit of her gloves, arched an elegant eyebrow in distaste.
At her feet, Void hissed softly at the retreating backs, as if the skeletal feline was also deeply offended by their cowardice.
“How incredibly rude to leave without saying goodbye.” Her eyes ignited with a sickly green witch-fire.
She made a lazy, sweeping gesture with her hand, as if closing her elegant fingers around an invisible throat.”Miasma Putridum.” Dark, necrotic energy erupted from her palm, effortlessly overtaking the fugitives.
There was no thunderous boom; only a sharp hiss, like a thousand invisible razors slicing through the air.
The fleeing bandits fell apart.
Literally.
The tidal wave of rapid necrosis and arcane lacerations reduced them to a fine bloody mist and a heap of minced meat before they could even reach the sanctuary of the trees.
Silence once again descended upon the trail, broken only by the pitiful groans of the dying, and the crisp, rhythmic crunching as Void eagerly set about consuming the severed ear of a fallen rogue.
The dust from the skirmish with the robber knights settled slowly, mixing with the metallic scent of blood and the ozone stench of fading magic.
The forest returned to its unnatural silence, broken only by the shuffling of boots and the methodical scrape of a whetstone.
Lengos sat on a fallen, mossy log, his back to the trail.
His golden armor, now stained with mud and gore, had lost some of its luster, but he himself seemed entirely unmoved.
He wiped his bastard sword with a rag, devoting full, almost ritualistic attention to every single stroke.
For him, the battle was over.
For Yerga, the possibilities were just opening up.
The necromancer strolled among the bodies of the defeated bandits with the nonchalant grace of a connoisseur selecting fruit at a morning market.
Beside her trotted Void, who with a loud crunch had just bitten off a dead gnome’s finger and was batting it around the dirt like a mouse.
Yerga nudged the body of a thug with the tip of her elegant boot, her lips curling in distaste.
“Oh, Lengos,” she murmured, a note of genuine disappointment lingering in her voice.”Look at this one here.
He had perfect bone structure.
Broad shoulders, a strong jaw…
It’s a bit of a pity you shredded him quite so thoroughly.”
The paladin didn’t pause his weapon cleaning.
“I aimed for the solar plexus,” he replied coldly.
“If you had struck an inch lower, I would have made a beautiful archer out of him,” she continued, adjusting the brim of her hat and delicately sidestepping a puddle of blood in which her feline was splashing.”And now?
He’s only fit for compost.
Such a tragic waste of material.”
Lengos finally looked up.
His blue eyes were as hard as the steel he was polishing.
“He wasn’t sculpting clay, Yerga.
He was an enemy trying to put a crossbow bolt into Neira’s back.
I struck where I had to, so he would stop being a threat.”
Yerga rolled her eyes, sighing theatrically.
“‘Threat,’ ‘enemy,’ ‘had to’…
You are so terribly dramatic, sweetheart.
You speak of it as if you were doing them some grave injustice.
And yet death is merely…
a change of occupation.”
She crouched beside another body; a young warrior who looked almost pristine, save for a unnaturally twisted neck.
She peeled off her glove and gently stroked his cheek.
Green sparks cascaded from her long, perfectly manicured nails, dancing across the corpse’s pale skin.
“Look at him,” she whispered with a tenderness she never showed the living.”Right now he lies in the mud: ugly, dead, and useless.
But all it takes is one kiss from me, a touch of magic, and voilà!
He’ll stand up, dust himself off, and serve the cause more faithfully than he ever did in life.
Is that not a form of…
promotion?”
Lengos stood up abruptly.
The sharp scrape of his sword sliding into its scabbard sounded like a death sentence.
“It is a desecration,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument.
He stood right in front of her, looking straight into her eyes.
Although they were nearly the exact same height, his unwavering posture gave the impression that he towered over her.
There was no aggression in his stance, however; only a weary, paternal sternness.
“Taking a life is a heavy burden.
A last resort.
When my blade severs the thread of life, I extinguish someone’s story, their hopes, and their choices.
I do it because the world is brutal, and sometimes the only way to save the innocent is to destroy the guilty.
But I take no joy in it.
And by the gods, I do not treat their corpses like a playground.”
Yerga straightened up, laughing a silvery, rippling laugh.
Against the gruesome backdrop of the slaughtered raiders, the sound was ghoulishly cheerful.
“And that is exactly why you’re so dreadfully tense, little knight.
You treat death like the end of the party, when it’s really just the afterparty!
You paladins, even the fallen ones, have such an exhausting obsession with the ‘sanctity of life.’ But life is chaotic, filthy, loud, and tiring.
Death?
Death is clean.
Obedient.
Aesthetic.”
She pointed an elegant hand into the deep shadows beneath the trees.
The air rippled, and for a fleeting moment, Bregg materialized within the gloom.
The Death Knight stood motionless, completely ignoring the flies buzzing around the empty space where his legs should have been.
“Look at him,” she said with immense pride.”Does he look miserable to you?
He doesn’t complain, he doesn’t fear, he never tires.
He is perfect.”
“He is not perfect, Yerga,” Lengos replied quietly, stepping one pace closer.”He is empty.
An echo of a man, trapped within your will.
You do not grant them new life.
You only give them an existence without purpose.”
The necromancer looked deep into his eyes.
The smile didn’t fade from her lips, but it shifted.
It grew noticeably colder, far more predatory.
“I am the purpose.
Could there be any greater calling?”
She spun on her heel, her cloak swirling around her like a burial shroud.
She took a few steps, then paused and tossed over her shoulder:
“But don’t worry, darling.
When you finally fall…
I promise to be ever so gentle.
I’ll make you the most breathtaking guardian of my bedchamber.
I’ll even let you keep that dreary sense of duty of yours.
It will contrast so charmingly with my silk drapes.”
Lengos sat back down on the mossy log, exhaling heavily, like a man who had just finished explaining the intricacies of basic math to a stubborn child.
“May that day never come.
Not for my sake, but for yours.
Because even in death, I wouldn’t have the patience to listen to your endless prattling.”
Yerga wasn’t listening.
She waved her hand dismissively, and Bregg melted into the air, vanishing as silently as he had appeared.
“We shall see, little knight.
We shall see.
Let’s go!
This corpse is boring me already!
Void, drop that ear, we’re moving!”
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