He pushed open the door. He smelled the death before he saw it. The ground was thick with semi-congealed blood clinging to his boots.
Not one had been spared. Not the very young. Not the innocent. Every single one had been slaughtered like an autumn sow. The horror of the scene was so intense he perceived it all as some kind of cartoonish representation of violence, too disgusting, too craven, too perfectly vile to be real.
And yet it was real.
Nobody was left.
Everybody had been taken, their lives cut short, and their souls stolen. He was standing in the presence of an almost endless tragedy. Many of these young people would have grown up to become mothers and fathers. Their deaths represented entire generations wiped off the planet in advance, a million lives going unlived.
He felt the heaviest sense of a complete absence of feeling, a total contradiction as the entire contents of his soul had been removed. With the lyrakin dead, there was no purpose anymore. This was:
Game Over.
* * *
PREVIOUS SAVE RELOADED
“You Bryn?”
The strangers had northern accents. They were brutish in their consonants, dress, and their scarred visages. The question was grunted at him in an aggressive sort of way, more like an accusation than an inquiry.
“I’m Bryn.”
He would never deny who he was, even to those who fairly clearly wished to do him harm.
“You collect the orphans. Right? You sell them? You use them? We’re looking for a couple of young girls ourselves. You got anything sweet and juicy to sell us?” The stranger jangled a bag of coin at Bryn, potential payment for one of his whelps.
Ten minutes later…
Bryn loaded the bodies into the bushes at the back of the chapel, turned around and walked back to the den as quickly as he could go. This was not the time to be distracted by the need for a draught, no matter how much he needed one after dealing with Hail.
This time he was not too late. This time he felt what had infiltrated his sanctuary, and saw dark shades moving toward the entrance of the den.
“STOP!”
The shadows paused, then rustled about. What he was looking at were not men, nor animals. They were spirits, evil denizens, and bringers of doom. Few could distinguish them from the normal shadows which fell from trees, and passersby, but Bryn knew their true nature instantly. They were emissaries of the Dark, come to claim blood.
“Hold!”
He called out to them, but they did not respond, for they did not know that he was speaking to them. Shades did not have ears for the words of mortal men. They heard only the whispers of their dark master, and followed his orders with relentless precision. In moments, they would have entrance to the unassuming and entirely innocent lyrakin whelps. He could not allow that to happen, at any cost.
Bryn drew in his power, the power he claimed to have renounced, and sent forth a beam of light from an amulet hung about his neck. The light was so intense that it burned and then slew every shadow it touched. In a matter of seconds, they were vanquished and Bryn had committed an act of complete hypocrisy.
He told all his lyrakin, and Hail especially, that potions were the work of the dark. She argued that some were the work of the light, but he knew that all acts of magick were works of the dark. Even the amulet which he used as a very last line of defense for the lyrakin whelps was a vile work.
Bryn continued into the den. Shades did not appear out of nowhere. They did not act often, certainly not in great numbers at the door of the den. Something, or more likely someone, had attracted them.
He had a good idea who.
“HAIL!” He thundered her name.
“What?”
He found her sitting up in bed, looking relatively well, for the moment at least.
“I told you, no acts of magic inside the den.”
“Who said I committed acts of magic?”
He growled and gritted his teeth. He decided not to tell her about the shades or of the slaughter which inevitably followed if they were summoned. Telling her would only make her curious and even more likely to summon them with purpose. She would want to fight them herself.
“Do not lie to me, lass.”
“Okay, I was trying to do a new spell,” she admitted. “I found a scrap of paper in my pockets after the… after… well, anyway. It was new to me. So I’ve been trying to learn it. I’ve just been saying it over and over again, but the words are hard.”
Bryn grabbed the paper from her, took a single glance at it, and hurled it into the fire.
“That's not one of your little healing spells, girl. That’s a necromancy spell. It draws a demon to you.”