Thanks AvolitionBrit. I should be able to play starting from tomorrow (Sunday 15th), assuming nothing goes horribly wrong. I'd also like to express my appreciation for Maloy and Unraveller's latest writeups; I love the character development and writing of them both.
Speaking of writeups: here's part two of turn 92, leading on from
part 1. Hopefully I'll be able to write up the rest of the turn before another two months go by and I lose half my screencaps again :V.
3rd Malachite, 899The sun was low in the western sky by the time Gasin, Thadar, and Dubmith neared their destination. The diaries that Gasin had confiscated from Kosoth Heatlions’ house had been less than useful, many of their pages torn out by its owner’s hand or purposefully obfuscated with ink. They had given only a name – Channeltwigs. A small castle, not too far westward from the hamlet they had been called to.
Gasin slowed his pace, the hair on the back of his neck prickling up. The chitter of birds and animals in the grass, present throughout their travels, was now absent. Not a thing stirred as the three of them made their way across the grassy slopes that lay ahead of the castle. Eyes narrowed to wary slits, his fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword. A look to his side confirmed it – Thadar had sensed the same oddities, and was looking to him with an expression to match his own.
“Stand ready, my comrades,” He murmured, feeling his skin crawl strangely. “There is devilry in the air here.”
Thadar and Dubmith obeyed, their hands dropping to the hilts of their respective weapons. The party of three crept forward at a slow, alert pace, expecting some Blight-bearing creature to spring from the thin air in ambush. None of them expected what lay beyond the crest of the last hill.
“By the shadows…”
The field before the castle was carpeted with the dead. Very few of them were whole; even fewer were fully human. Most bore the blisters and weeping sores of the Blight-infected, beside the terrible wounds that had killed them; others were bloated or desiccated, as though they had laid exposed for seasons before the group’s arrival.
The castle itself was in ill condition, as well. The walls were pitted and stained, while the main gates hung in ruin on their broken hinges. More bodies were piled at the gatehouse’s entrance, left to rot in the dirt where they had fallen. These corpses were new, some still leaking blood from their mortal wounds; more disturbingly, all but a few lacked any sign of the Blight’s foul influence. Gasin felt his face crease into a frown as he bent down to study one of the bodies, turning it over with the assistance of his sword to get a better look.
“Wait –” Gasin’s eyes narrowed, then widened sharply as he turned another of the bodies over. Upon its broken breastplate, it bore the crest of the Realm of Silver, half-obscured by blood and dirt. “These bodies are fresh.”
Thadar swore aloud at that, marching over to stand beside him. “You’re right, ser. Hours old, at least. And here –” She raised a gauntlet-clad finger to point down at the nearest corpse. Its hands were still wrapped around the throat of another, this one with a bloodied, blistered face twisted into a mask of fury. “This one was no thrall.”
“Aye,” Gasin leaned down to look closer. “And these wounds, too... blade and bludgeon, but too severe for a human’s hand.”
Inquisitor and soldier looked to one another with a scare. Neither dared speak what they feared, however, instead turning back to Dubmith – the priestess of Bikda had not spoken a word since they arrived, standing amidst the bodies with her head cocked to the side as though listening for something. Before Gasin could speak, she raised a finger for silence.
“Wait,” Dubmith ordered. “Do you hear that?”
Gasin and Thadar stopped to match their comrade, ears straining to catch whatever distant sound the priestess of Bikda had sensed. At first, there was nothing but the slow whistle of the wind and the rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth to be heard. Slowly, however, there came another noise – a voice, rendered near-unintelligible by distance and distortion, but unmistakably human. And, if the tones were any indication, quite thoroughly distressed.
“Life? In this place?” Thadar rumbled, turning her good eye to look askance at Dubmith. Though her doubt was clear in her voice, the ill-concealed twitching of her fingers toward her axe and the glint to her eye put the lie to her scepticism.
“It would sound as much, aye!” Dubmith cried, wheeling to face Gasin. “Lord C –”
But Gasin was already in motion, traveller’s cloak billowing out behind him as he sprinted across the gore-spattered field, sword in hand and shield raised. Thadar couldn’t help but let out an amused laugh at the sight, unlimbering her great axe and storming after him with a grin on her ruined face. It had been too long since her last proper fight, and even longer since she’d seen Gasin of all people rushing in ahead of her.
“Try to keep up, ‘Mith!” She yelled back, grinning wider at her comrade’s half-poleaxed expression. “Don’t want you to miss out on this!”
The castle of Channeltwigs was under siege. The thralls had come in the night, shambling out of the darkness at the head of a horde of the dead. Gaunt, emaciated creatures weeping blood from reddened sores; grotesquely over-muscled brutes, their flesh splitting open with every movement; forms so mangled that they were little more than lumps of flesh and bone, dragging themselves through the dirt through sheer will – all had come out of the dark like the boogeymen of old tales, to batter at the gates of the castle in search of the living souls within.
They had fought them. They had hurled arrows and stones down at the shambling horde, fought them with blade and bludgeon when they sought to break through the gatehouse and enter the main body of the castle.
But it hadn’t been enough. The thralls were persistent and patient, and the defenders could only hold them back for so long. Every thrall lost was replaced by another; every defender lost swelled their ranks. The shambolic horde of refuse following in their wake had only tipped the balance further, until their lines had finally disintegrated under the pressure and the gates had come crashing in.
“Back to the keep, damn you all! Fall back!” Hathur Craftedmirrored roared, her voice carrying across the courtyard despite the snarls and groans of the blighted horde that now surrounded it on all sides. The broad-shouldered axewoman shoved one of the fleeing castle staff behind her, twisting her arm about to slam a shambling corpse full in the face with her shield. It collapsed with a spray of blood and a muffled groan, letting her partner finish it off with a sharp downward blow of his hammer.
“How the hell… are we meant to hold them back… captain?” Luki, their archer, wheezed. Her features were lined with exhaustion, blood dripping from her fingers where her bowstring had cut into the skin. She had barely made it back into the courtyard when the thralls and the undead broke through into the barracks, making it out moments before the doors were barred.
“We don’t. Lusko -” She turned to face their hammerman, from his position beside the keep’s doors. “There’s a passage in the cellar - a tunnel. Get everyone you can out, and go south. Get to Speechrags and ask them for shelter.”
“Yes – but… what about you?”
Hathur shook her head. “I stay. I can buy us a few minutes if I can give them something to hunt.”
She was midway through walking forward, her axe and shield raised in readiness for one last fight, when she felt a hand grip her shoulder.
“Then I can double that time.” Mori raised her shield and war hammer, a smile spreading across her face. Others joined her in moments, the few remaining members of Channeltwigs’ military stepping forward in wordless agreement, their features set into masks of grim determination. “All of us can. What do you say?”
“You take the dozen on the left, and I’ll take those on right.” Sizet drawled, a note of amusement entering her tone as she nodded toward the horde of thralls lumbering across the grass toward them. “Shouldn’t be too hard. If these careless bastards were stupid enough to get bit, even
we should be able to put ‘em down.”
Hathur and a few of the others laughed, though there was little true levity in the sound.
“Thank you. All of you.” Hathur gripped the leather-bound handle of her weapon, trying to ignore the leaden weight in her gut and the painful tightness rising in her chest. She turned back toward the keep, forcing her features into something like a smile. “May we meet again around a hearth in Loli’s halls.”
The barrier they had erected to try and block off the thrall-infested barracks gave way with a crash, the dead spilling out into the castle’s grounds. Hathur’s head whipped around to face the source of the sound, and felt her blood run cold. She recognised the thrall standing there, towering and hatchet eyed, a spear clutched in her blistered fingers.
Ramet had always been one of the best of them, tall and heavily muscled from years of practice with the spear. She could wield her polearm like an extension of her own body, flitting in between the arcing blows of enemy soldier and wild beast alike with a fey grace before delivering a pin-point blow that would send her foe’s body crashing to the ground, struck dead or crippled in a single strike. When the thralls had come, Ramet had been one of the first to the walls, a key figure in the castle’s defence. She’d danced between the lethal, snapping jaws and raking bone talons of their former comrades to deliver precise stabs and broad swings with her spear, cutting through blighted flesh to send the lifeless bodies of thrall after thrall crashing to the red-stained ground. She’d been tireless, saving the lives of her companions a dozen times over in the course of the bloody battles that defined the past few days.
She was a hero, and a friend. Now, with the Blight burning through her blood, that power was amplified and turned against them all.
Ramet’s spear pinned Ves to the wall like an insect on a board before she could even blink, her stout plate providing little protection against the thrall’s diabolical strength. Jasro had only a moment to shout in denial before Ramet was upon her, tearing her spear loose from Ves’ collapsing body and practically vaulting over the corpse of her once-friend to lunge at the crossbowman, howling like an animal.
Jasro managed to get her bow up halfway before the spear’s head took her through the jaw, and Ramet’s free hand was clawing at her face. Thrall and archer alike went over in a tangle of limbs, rolling along the ground and vanishing into the tide of bodies that had spilled from the gatehouse. For an instant, Hathur dared to hope that she might just see Jasro emerge – then Ramet burst free a few moments later, mouth smeared with bright red gore and her eyes ablaze with insatiable hunger.
For a single, terrible moment, the defenders faltered. Then, as the horde began to charge, one of them let out a shout in a voice of thunder and slammed their weapon against their shield.
“For Omon Obin!”
Within seconds, it was a melee once again. Hathur waded into the tide of bodies, her greataxe sounding heavily upon the limbs of thrall and reanimated corpse alike. Metal split and leather tore under the force of her strikes, baring diseased flesh for her fellows to tear into with their own weapons, sending limbs flying in every direction. Sizet and Mori occupied themselves with keeping Ramet away from the keep, desperately countering the wild, jerking creature’s blows and trying to strike back with their own. Luki snapped off a couple quick shots from her bow, only for the arrows to harmlessly bounce from Ramet's iron shield; the thrall responded with customary brutality, raking her across the arm with claw-like nails before driving the point of her spear through the archer's cheek. While it did not penetrate too deeply, it was still enough to rip several teeth from the gums and send Luki lurching back toward the wooden doors of the keep.
Oce was not so lucky. A wild charge from the thralls caught the dwindling party in the flank. Hathur managed to keep them at bay with several desperate swings of her axe, but Oce ended up being sent to the ground by the weight of one walking corpse; within moments, he was in the jaws of half a dozen thralls, screaming as the blighted creatures set to their bloody work. The iron plate and mail that had preserved his life in their previous battles was now turned against him, turning the knives and teeth of the thralls away from his most vital areas.
Hathur was close, almost in arm’s reach. She could see his head turning to face her, blood running in rivulets down his face. His mouth moved, soundlessly, but the request was clear enough.
Hathur made the only decision she could.
She gritted her teeth, drew back her arm, and continued to fight. Under any other circumstance, she would have granted the mercy-stroke in a heartbeat; as it stood, to grant it would be to die. And so Hathur Craftedmirrored fought on, even as her fallen friend’s agonised screams rose and fell and finally cut off amidst a set of wet crunching noises, even as her limbs began to burn with the effort of moving and sweat soaked through her padded tunic, even as her vision began to sting and blur with unshed moisture.
The thralls pressed their attack once again. They seemed almost organised in their aggression, now that they had tasted blood – Ramet and the stronger thralls hung back from the pack, circling the trapped soldiers like wolves, while the walking corpses and weaker thralls threw themselves against the dwindling group’s defences in mindless, shrieking hunger. They paid dearly for each inch of ground taken, but the dead were as numerous as they were aggressive. Inch by painful inch, they were being driven backward toward the gates of the castle’s keep.
And then the battle would be over. It was a miracle they had held out this long, but desperation and determination could only hold the dead at bay so long. Soon, there would be none of them left to defend the few wounded and non-combatants left in the keep, and then the horde would feast.
A ripple ran through the horde. Blind, mutilated creatures turned their heads back toward the ruined gates; thralls swung about, their nostrils flaring as they sniffed the air. There – in the gatehouse’s ruins! Three soldiers in unfamiliar garb stood, looking upon the field of carnage that greeted them.
The thrall that had once been Ugan howled in fury and lunged for the trio of new arrivals, her bloodied maul swinging in a wild arc. Before it could strike against flesh or metal, the leader of the group was already in motion; he strode confidently toward the seething press of broken bodies and twisted flesh, longsword sweeping up to cut the heavy, broad head of the maul away from the shaft with almost contemptuous ease before whipping about into a reverse-stroke that cut most of Ugan’s arm from her body. A third slash, and the once noble hammerwoman was freed from the Blight’s grasp.
His fellows wasted no time in following the first’s lead; scarcely had Ugan’s body fallen when it was joined by two others, a pair of the resurrected corpses falling in pieces as the swordswoman and her axe-bearing counterpart hammered their weapons into their rotting forms. The three strode on into the battle, blades sweeping around their forms as they began to tear a bloody swathe through the undead horde. Thralls and corpses alike fell with every blow, to be replaced by more as the horde switched its attention to the new threat in its midst.
Hathur felt something bloom in her chest at the sight, something light and hot. Energy she didn’t know she had surged back into her leaden limbs, and she swung her axe back over her shoulder, screaming a war-cry as she plunged into the battle once again. The other surviving soldiers echoed her gesture, plunging into the battle with furious shouts and renewed energy. Thrall after thrall fell in arcing sprays of scarlet blood until only Ramet remained, the blistered thrall locked in a furious three-on-one duel against the newcomers.
The leader of the three met a lunge from Ramet’s spear with one of his own, narrowly deflecting the copper head from his side. The thrall followed up the repelled lunge with a hard punch to the face, sending him back in a burst of blood and spittle, before wheeling about to kick the black-clad swordswoman full in the chest as she scrambled forward to try and strike at Ramet’s exposed back. Only the axewoman managed to land a blow, her axe’s head tearing a broad gash into the metal and wood of Ramet’s shield.
Snarling, the infected spearwoman turned to face the new threat, her spear looping about in a arc to neatly skewer the axewoman’s right shoulder; only a desperate dodge saved her from a serious blow, and even then it was strong enough to slice a fingerwidth through her bronze plate and draw a thin line of blood.
Seizing the opportunity, Gasin rushed forward and drove his longsword forward, the blade tearing a bloody gash across Ramet’s face that laid her head open to the bone. Ramet let out a thunderous roar of rage and wheeled about to retaliate, driving her spear at her attacker with enough ferocity to jar his arms painfully on the very first parry; the second and third slipped past his guard to draw blood from his shoulder and side, sending him scrambling backwards as Dubmith rushed forward to draw Ramet’s attention.
Ignoring the burning in her limbs, Hathur forced herself to move toward the duel. The others were holding back uncertainly, circling warily outside the reach of Ramet’s spear and clawed fingers, but she had no such compunctions. Whatever she could do to help them against the once-great spearwoman, she would do without hesitation.
Ramet’s spear met the axewoman’s bronze shield, deflecting off the rim in a shower of fat sparks. The grizzled warrior responded with a blow of her own, a blow from her shield’s edge sending a thin line of spittle and blood spraying from Ramet’s mouth. The thrall staggered, snarling, and in her distraction, she failed to see the form of Mori limping toward her from behind. As Ramet drew back her arm to strike, Mori lurched forward, seizing Ramet’s arm from behind with an iron-hard grip; the thrall staggered mid-lunge, unbalanced by the sudden weight.
And as Mori wrenched Ramet’s arm backward, preventing her from moving or punching at her latest target, Hathur charged full force against her former friend. Something tore its way out of her throat as she swung her axe down, a noise halfway between grief and rage joining the cacophony of the battle. The thrall that had once been her comrade looked up at the murderous cry; for a single moment its eyes met with hers, and in the moments before the heavy blade of Hathur’s axe shattered Ramet’s shoulderguard and cleaved her friend in half from collar to pelvis, she could see the relief in her friend’s eyes.
“That seems to be the last of them,” The nobleman intoned, turning toward Hathur and her surviving comrades. “You fought well.”
“Not well enough,” Hathur muttered, before she could stop herself. A bone-deep weariness was settling over her, and it took all her remaining will not to slump to her knees.
“Nonetheless, to hold against such odds speaks much of your prowess.” He remarked, peering past her to where the rest of the survivors stood. A mixture of wary, exhausted, and outright fearful gazes met his, the survivors still stuck in the haze of blood and death that had hung over them for the past days. The nobleman’s features quirked into an almost apologetic smile. “Ah, but where are my manners? I am Gasin Crewcanyons, of The Order of Butterflies.”
“Hathur Craftedmirrored of Channeltwigs,” She managed to wheeze, before her legs finally gave out. Only a quick grab by Mori stopped her falling face-first into the dirt, the hammerwoman keeping her upright with a grunt of effort. Grimacing, Hathur tried to force herself to speak again, only to be cut off by a look from Mori. The grim-faced hammerwoman turned to the inquisitor, teeth bared in a grimace.
“Can this wait, sire?” She growled, heaving Hathur back to a semi-upright position against her shoulder. "
“Indeed, this can wait.” Gasin nodded toward the keep. “We should see to the wounded, first.”
“Wait…” Hathur managed to wheeze, heart lurching sharply in her chest. She turned her head to face her comrades, adrenaline flooding into her as she recognised that they were one short. “Sizet! Where-!”
“There!” Mori growled, raising a hand to point to where a slumped figure lay in the dirt. Dubmith was kneeling beside her, fingers pressed to the side of Sizet’s neck. With Mori’s support, Hathur managed to limp over to the pair, heart hammering painfully in her chest.
Dubmith must have seen the question on Hathur’s face before it was asked, for her features tightened and she made a grim shake of her head.
“Sizet…” Hathur whispered to herself. It felt almost unreal to see her like this, the smirking, light-hearted entertainer of the castle’s militia now silent and still on the bloodied grass. Three good friends, now, she had lost to the depredations of the living dead, and all in one day. “…Rest well, my friend, and may the Light welcome you home.”
She reached out with a shaking hand to close her friend’s eyes.
And then, impossibly, the axewoman’s bleeding body twitched. One glassy eye snapped into focus, the whites stained almost completely red by some internal rupture. It flickered across the gathered warriors. Blood bubbled up from her throat as she tried to speak, breaking off into a sickly, wet cough that sprayed scarlet spittle across the dirt around her.
“Blood of the gods!” Dubmith gasped. Almost instinctually, her hands snapped to the pouch containing her medicinal tools. “Lord Gasin! Thadar! I need help over here!”
The courtyard of castle Channeltwigs was an inferno. A pyre burned in the flat space before the keep, filing the air with the noxious scent of cremation and burnt fabric. Well over a dozen good men and women had fallen to the depredations of the undead horde this day, half of them to the horror of the Blight, and the survivors had chosen to honour them in the only way they could.
The survivors of the thralls’ assault had gathered in a rough circle around the pyre, watching in silence as the fire consumed the visceral evidence of the bloody siege. Dubmith was absent, currently ensconced within the keep as she sought to ensure the survival of the terribly wounded axewoman; any effort to enter had been rebuffed sharply by the scarred, vicious figure of Thadar, who stood guard beside the iron-studded doors. Gasin was standing with the group, though his features were lined with pain as the gesture tugged the stitched wound in his side; the phial of murky liquid he had downed seemed to do little to dull the sensations.
The silence was broken as Dubmith emerged from the keep, plodding across the grass toward the great pyre. Her face was lined with exertion and her arms covered to the elbow in blood, but she bore a triumphant light in her eye as she and Thadar drew up beside the pyre.
“She’s stable,” Dubmith wheezed, her voice barely above a hoarse whisper. She tossed a scrap of blood-soaked cloth into the fire, watching with a half-unfocused eye as it caught light and twisted in the heat. “Weak, but stable. The Fields may be fighting for her soul, but she’s fighting them every step of the way.”
“Thank the gods.” Hathur murmured, letting out a breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding in, almost sinking to her knees in relief. Despite everything they had lost, she wouldn’t have to bury another of her friends today; as little of a comfort as that was, it was all she could bring to mind. Mori rested her hand awkwardly on her shoulder - what passed for a comforting motion for the dour, hard-faced hammerwoman – before turning to face the new arrivals.
“Much as I respect you for saving our lives,” Mori intoned, staring Gasin and his comrades down across the pyre with something between wariness and hostility. “You are yet to speak of why you came to this forsaken place.”
“We were sent by the Law-Giver to investigate rumours of a Blight resurgent.” Thadar growled, carefully drawing a whetstone across her axe’s blade with every few words. “We found it. What more d’you need to know?”
“Eloquent as ever, Thadar,” Dubmith rolled her eyes, shaking her head in annoyance at her comrade’s blunt ways. She turned to face Mori, voice taking on an almost conciliatory tone. “The Law-Giver received word from the southwest hamlets – tales of foul occurrences and unexplained deaths, travellers going missing and people vanishing in the night. He feared it might be the work of a Blight-spreading creature, and so we were sent to investigate.”
“Nigh upon a century since the Blight began, and still the wounds it has wrought fester.” Gasin mused, rising from his position beside the fire, pacing about before his fellows. His shadow flickered and shifted in the pyre-light, casting jittery knife-slashes around them “But now – now, we might just be able to remove its source.”
“Its source!” One of the younger soldiers cried, her temper finally reaching its limit and her irritation rising in consequence. “What source! What does the man mean?”
“The Sage.” Gasin growled. He paused a moment to spit, as though wishing to clear his mouth of the word’s foul aftertaste. Dubmith and Thadar exchanged equally dark expressions, hands tightening on their weapons at the mention of the name. At the visible confusion on his audience’s faces, the inquisitor hastened to explain. “He’s a sorcerer – a wielder of foul magicks, who defiles the dead to serve his own dark purposes. A traitor, to our Realm and to the Lady of Healing both. And the originator of this accursed Blight.”
That drew the reaction he had hoped for. Hathur was pale with sudden fury or horror; beside her, Luki and Mori looked outright sickened. Dubmith and Thadar, long ago informed of their quarry, seemed relatively unperturbed, though a closer look would reveal the way their fingers had tightened almost painfully around the grips of their weapons. Gasin resumed his pacing before the fire, speaking more quickly now that he had their undivided attention.
“He was a healer, to begin with – a position giving access to the vulnerable and the weak, whom he sought to aid by whatever means were necessary. But as the Silver Plague raged, and the numbers of the dead and the dying rose, he began to despair in the face of his task’s enormity, and a dark seed was planted within his heart. He worked day and night to aid the sick and comfort the dying, burning through remedy after remedy in his desperate search for a panacea to the Plague – and then, on one fateful night, the Plague spread to him.
“Fearing for his life, the Sage abandoned his home and hearth and fled into the great Tundra of Heroes, that he might die alone and spread the Plague no further. He would wander through the snow and ice for days before collapsing, his skin dark with his own blood, his mind wracked with feverish visions. And it was in this madness that dark Powers whispered to him, speaking of futures yet to be and paths that the Sage could yet walk – if only he would drink from their poisoned chalice, and become a servant of pestilence until his last days.”
“A strange and terrible tale indeed,” Mori mused, and then, sharply: “How might you have come to know of it in such detail?”
Gasin smiled once more, but now it seemed hollow and solemn. “My lady, I once belonged to the same brotherhood as he.” Something flashed over his face, a strange mixture of pain and discomfort clouding his noble features. There had come a darkness about his eyes, and when he spoke again, his voice was surprisingly tremulous. “That we could not turn him from the path of darkness; that he has wrought such terrible chaos… our greatest shames, passed down the years that we might never forget what we failed to prevent – and that we might ensure they are never repeated.”
He ceased his pacing for a moment to stare at them all, the firelight casting rippling shadows across his features. He looked pale, worn, strained by the terrible wound in his side – but his eyes blazed with the force of his determination, and there was an undeniable ferocity in his words.
“I and my brethren failed the Realm of Silver once. We will not do so again.”
For a long time, silence reigned among the group. Weary, dark eyes exchanged uncertain glances. At last, though, Mori rose to her feet and strode forward to where Gasin stood silhouetted against the pyre’s flames.
“There is nothing left for me here.” She said, shortly, bowing her head slightly. “I will join your cause, master Crewcanyons, if it will see our Realm restored.”
By way of answer, Gasin drew his sword and planted it point-down into the dirt. He bent to one knee, features barely twitching as a sharp thunderbolt of pain lanced up his injured leg, before placing a palm against the blade and drawing it sharply downwards. Carefully, he raised his bleeding palm aloft, letting a few drops of crimson blood fall from the shallow cut in the skin into the burning pyre as he spoke.
“Until justice has been served unto those responsible for what happened today; until the dead of this place know peace, my cause shall be as yours.” Gasin intoned. The firelight cast rippling shadows across his features, but they were as earnest and firm as ever. “So do I swear, on my life and blood.”
The motion seemed to embolden the others. One by one, each of the castle’s survivors walked forward to join Mori by the pyre and speak with Gasin, the nobleman sealing each pact with a single drop of his own blood. Once the last of them was finished and the small cut closed, he returned to his position beside Dubmith and Thadar, weary eyes gazing across the group as the former began to bind the cut in his hand, grumbling under her breath as she went.
“We can do no more tonight.” Gasin murmured, staring into the flames with his liquid black eyes. “Rest, my comrades. We begin early tomorrow – we must continue on this trail before it grows cold.”
“And what of you, lord Crewcanyons?”
“I will take first watch.” He shook his head, staring off into the distance with a dark eye. Though his countenance had scarcely changed, the look in his eyes belied the troubled thoughts behind them. “The night holds no comfort for me.”
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Topic: Museum III, adventure succession game (DF 0.47.05) (Read 474958 times)