Please read: Part one

The arrows were still embedded into his chest when Wierna went to look on Henden’s body. His mouth agape, widened as if ready to scream. His eyes were shut, and two coins of silver and of gold lay upon their lids.

She struggled to keep herself in check. Her breathing faltered and tears threatened. The state of him almost moved her to wretch. Time passed and she could feel the tremor in her hands calm. A hand signal told her men to light the pyre. Dressed in full body armor, bearing the colors of her house, a lone knight stepped forward to set the blaze with a torch.

The fire consumed the last of Henden. Black smoke billowed as the flames reached ever higher into the dark, blotting out the white shine cast down by the stars. There will be a period in the future in which we shall grieve proper, Wierna thought. But for now that grief will stoke rage and hatred, carrying with it a taste for vengeance. These bandits must pay blood for blood.

Hardened in her resolve, caught in the throes of a violent conviction, she issued orders to round up any bandits in the nearby forest. They were to be hanged without a trial.

—-

The sun reached high noon and brought with it a choking heat, baking the earth and all those who tread upon it. Tracks made by wagon wheels and many generations of horses stretched over the flatlands on which Eqira rode her mount. She whistled a soft tune, in high spirits despite the sweltering humidity. Grass all around her swayed like rolling waves in the gentle breeze.

She sweat through her tunic, a fine satin make that draped over her person much like a blanket. Stitched into the silver fabric were depictions of runes, some of which glowed a dull pink, discerning even in the bright of day. Her hair was long and blue, streaming over one shoulder, faded to white at the edges.

Beneath a wide-brim cap, her violet eyes reflected the light double fold. Her face was round and plump, jowls sagging. She continued carrying the tune, and her destrier traveled as it did in a slow walk.

The path Eqira took eventually disappeared, whether by the recent rains or simply due to the years passing on, she could not tell. She tugged on the reins to stop and wrinkled her nose.

“Well this is a fine to-do,” she muttered, sweeping her gaze left to right then back again. An incantation sat on the tip of her tongue, but she held fast to the spell. She squinted. Ahead of her, the beginnings of a forest quartered off the flatlands.

“Could have sworn that wasn’t there before, but maybe this maddening heat is frying my head like an egg.” She clicked her tongue, ushering the horse forward. “Suppose all we can do is find out what awaits us.”

—

He sharpened his blade with the slow ease of one who had done it many times. The campfire burned low. Nothing more but embers barely living, a dying memory colored a dull orange against the cold grey-blue of the rising sun.

Bodies lay all about him, mutilated beyond recognition. A few continued to bleed, staining the muddy ground and moaning for their lives to be spared, giving voice to their agony.

The knife he sharpened soaked in a crimson still dripping wet. His beard flecked with droplets of blood. Eyes as black as onyx glared at the blade. His leather jacket painted red. Shaggy dark hair dampened flat against his skin, cool as a breeze flowed in from the east and dried the perspiration that swam down his face.

“Please…” whispered one of his victims, reaching up with a trembling hand to grasp his boot by the toe. “Please end it now.”

“Your end may come when I will it so. Begging will neither hasten nor delay that inevitability,” said the killer, his voice graveled. “Besides this, I have questions need answering and that requires you to breathe the sweet air just a bit longer.”

This particular victim had been slashed across the gut, his pink and grey insides spilling out. His complexion was pale, and his face was bruised and cut several slices over.

“What is it you want to know?”

“Tell me, Chancellor Corvinus, do you know the whereabouts of Eqira?”

Chancellor Corvinus gasped. His life nearly spent. But an answer left his lips all the same. “I know not of whom you speak.”

The killer rose from his seat and flashed the Chancellor a small grin. “Come now, Corvinus. My sources tell me otherwise. And my sources do not lie.”

“She left a long… long time ago.” Corvinus coughed, ragged and heavy. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. The killer took two long strides and placed the blade at Corvinus’ throat.

“Tell me what you can, and I’ll end it now. Call it a final courtesy.”

“She is crossing the Eternal Void, to new worlds. She told me…” He breathed quick now, every lungful less so than the last. “She told… told me…”

A death-rattle exhale. “Cascadia.”