Chapter Text
“Easy,” the caravanner chided and the sandy-maned mare huffed again.
“What’s gotten into them?” the man in the wagon seat beside him asked, a bite of irritation in his voice.
“Is there an issue?” came a third voice—that of an elderly man resting idly atop the lowered gate on the back of the wagon, a knee bent with an elbow atop it while the other leg swayed with the cart over the side.
“Nay, Khadgar.” One of the caravan masters, Maynard, hopped onto the well-worn gravel road; it crunched beneath his boots. The low hanging willow branches of Duskwood swirled around them as though angry, and the horses pulling their research equipment whickered and stamped. Maynard soothed one with a calming hand to its muscled neck. “Something’s just got them spooked is all.”
“Should we take a minor reprieve?”
The other man in the front seat—a large former Kul Tiran sailor nicknamed Jingles—looked over his shoulder with a mustachioed grin. “No need t’worry magus. Shouldn’t be but a minute.”
Khadgar’s cobalt eyes flicked through the group of men and horses behind him before he shrugged a shoulder, then leaned the other against the wagon’s corner post once again.
After some convincing and the readjusting of blinders, the caravan set into rickety motion once again. Another warm summer breeze brought the willows to life and stirred a number of fireflies from their hiding places amongst the tall brush. The scent of a distant fire and lilacs whispered through the men before disappearing as quickly as it had come. Save for the creaking of the wagon wheels and squeaky lanterns, the night was quiet beyond the usual crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl.
The crew had been traveling for a few days and nights with the promise of valuable research. Karazhan was not far, now, and the small group of men—scholars, archeologists, and artificers—were stirring restlessly as they neared the end of their journey. This path through Duskwood was the last leg.
It wasn’t until farther down the road, however, that another sound rose with the night, and it was immediately clear what had unsettled their animals.
Screaming.
Not wont to upset the mares any further, the party urged them on at a steady pace. Apprehension rose in every man’s throat, sticking behind their Adam’s apples as the shrieks grew louder and more frantic. A dim lantern came into view at a y-shaped intersection; behind it sat the looming night-blanketed silhouette of a manse. Once close enough, the horses puffed and slowed to a halt, their eyes wide behind their blinders. Khadgar and the two caravan masters leapt to their feet before the wagon could come to a complete stop and raced across the path, leaving the other five men to tend to the frightened steeds.
Large though the home was, the trio easily found their way to the back where an open cellar door sat nestled beside the porch. The screams had dulled to quiet, simpering gasps. A chorus of masculine laughter rose up accompanied by the staccato of something thunking against wood. All this, accented by the flickering red light of an oil lamp, only helped to strengthen the illusion that this cellar door was, in fact, a portal into hell itself.
The men stomped down the old oaken stairs as a group. Breath hot and thick in their chests, their boots pounded frantically into the annexed room where they came to an abrupt halt. Their faces all paled at the sight before them.
The group of men paused in their work to look up at the trio—all save for the gnoll who continued gnawing on his meal. Blood flowed through the floorboards creating gruesome tributaries within the oaken divots. Ashen limbs littered the ground, their flatly chopped ends oozing. The ghastly face of a dead man stared ever downward in the corner, red on his lips and down his front.
A thick blanket of what he could only describe as atmosphere draped over Khadgar like heavy spiderwebs. It clung to his robes and bade the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. Old wine? No. Something else. Something…
“Mother…” a voice gasped from beneath the gnoll’s busy fangs.
“A girl,” Maynard croaked, but could barely form another word before the sharp shwip! of a knife sliced between the three. He staggered back and hissed, red eking through his tunic where the blade had lodged.
Khadgar reacted quickly. He lifted a hand, uttered a word of power, and in an instant the four men and gnoll were flying, heels over head, toward the wall at the far end of the room. They struck it with such force that the tools that were hung there clattered to the floor with them. They lay still for a moment, but when one groaned and attempted to stand again, he pummeled them once more with searing arcane magic until none of them moved. The tang of magic mingled with the blood in the air.
An odd, silent stillness that buzzed in their ears filled the room. Khadgar slowly lowered his hand, the tendons still vibrating with energy. A stuttered gasp sounded from the bloodied heap on the floor. A few seconds passed, then another, weaker gasp. Then none.
“Gods,” Jingles choked, his lip raising in a disgusted sneer; his hand lifted to cover it. “I’ve seen some things, but this…”
Maynard ripped the dagger from his shoulder and tossed it to the ground. When the daze of pain subsided, he settled his eyes on the girl on the floor. Another sort of pain exploded in his gut and he had to turn to leave the room, heaving along the way.
But Khadgar paid them no mind—or rather he couldn’t. Since he’d stepped foot in that room, that heavy air that he’d attributed to old, musty wine casks had hugged his head and not relented. It hummed through him like a distant cello. But now, in the silence of that cellar, he could feel that it was coming from the half-chewed body on the floor. His feet carried him to it and, no stranger to the viscera of death, he looked down at her.
A young girl with albinism, her one red eye stared dully back at him from behind a red ribbon of flesh that hung from her scalp; the other was gone, now only a bloodied void on her pale white face. They’d hacked off both her legs—without giving her so much as the dignity to do it symmetrically—and crudely amputated her left arm near the shoulder. The thrum of that dull orchestra powered through him and his jaw worked behind his thinned lips.
“She’s dead,” he said.
Jingles sighed behind him with an air of melancholy. “Weren’t quick enough,” he mumbled in his sea-touched accent.
“It would appear not,” the mage agreed and straightened. He ran a thoughtful palm over his mouth. His teeth chewed at the smooth skin inside his cheek.
Jingles turned for the door. “Shame.”
“We should bury her.”
The Kul Tiran man paused to shoot him a queer look over his shoulder. “Ain’t none of our business, really.”
“She was a mage,” Khadgar pressed, giving a sad glance in response. “We’ll bury her in the cemetery at Karazhan when we arrive.”
Jingles’s lips twisted in a manner that told of his disapproval, but he relented all the same. “All right,” he grunted. He shoved the recovering Maynard in the shoulder as he passed him. “Lessgo.”
The caravan masters’ footsteps faded up the stairs at his back. Khadgar knelt and lifted the corpse, shrugging her battered head to his shoulder while her discarded limbs lifted into the air to follow diligently behind inside auras of violet glitter. A shuffling behind him gave him pause and he turned. The gnoll stepped forward, giggling and panting; he was wringing his gnarled, furry hands and drooling.
“Just one?” he squeaked, clearly frightened, but following the wizard against his better judgment. “Just a leg? So hungry…”
Khadgar’s eyes flickered with something that could have been pity. He readjusted the body in his arms and turned for the stairs. “Plenty of food behind you.” He did not stop to see if his advice had been heeded.
After swaddling the girl in an old blanket, the men secured it with the clothespins. The old magus made a pulling motion toward his ruined robes with his fingers; the blood clinging to the threads lifted free and swirled into a ball before dropping into the grass. After a few more minutes of resituating and a short bit of explanation, the party continued east.
Following the week of extensive research he’d promised the caravan, Khadgar saw the lot to the end of the path at Karazhan’s entrance. A chill blew through the high cliffs at either side. Maynard and Jingles nodded their thanks and, their wagon now full of trinkets Khadgar had deemed unimportant enough to let go, set off.
The mage turned and stood, arms neatly folded beneath his ribs and weight rested on a heel. For a long while he stared ahead at nothing as he thought. A raven cried somewhere high above the towers. Branches creaked in the breeze accompanied by the whisper of leaves and noonday warmth.
Then, head unmoving, his tired eyes slid to the freshly dug grave at the far end of the cemetery.