Corone War: A Scarlet Mystery

[Brother in Arms]

“Charming place,” Randall muttered in his raspy baritone, following Christina and the elves farther into the compound. Though as an experienced Ranger he was familiar with most nooks and crannies in the Corone landscape, he admittedly knew very little of this particular sanctuary. He knew that there was one at the foot of the Jagged Mountains, seemed to recall that it had been closed for some reason or other, but more than that was obscured to his mind. It was possible that he had the information stored somewhere in the far reaches of his memory, but what did it matter anyways? These places always had the same story. If you put enough bad people in one place, nobody got to live happily ever after. And there had been bad people here doing bad stuff. He didn’t have to be an empath to sense that much. There was a sense of wrongness to the place, an emotional stench that seemed to permeate from within the walls like a bad odor of something rotten.

What Christina’s mission was in a place like this, Randall couldn’t guess and the spirited Ranger wouldn’t divulge. They have kept hit at arm’s length ever since the battle on the Niema bank, never really making note of his presence other than with suspicious glances. It was a small matter and not at all unexpected. The plot would unwind itself in due time, he knew, and the shrouded woodsman doubted it held any real surprises in store. He hadn’t seen it all, that much was true, but at his age and after the life he had led, he was getting pretty close. So whatever lay within the walls of asylum, Randall was rather certain that he could handle it.

The gravel crunching beneath their feet seemed to be the only sound for miles, ripping through the morning like a serrated dagger through a silk sheet. But then a gust of wind descended from those snowy peaks, whistling around the eaves with the ghostly sound of an abandoned abattoir, bringing chills that reminded them they were in the North. Randall’s dark cloak, which he rid of the foliage once they moved into the rocky mountains, fluttered lazily and he had to reach up to hold his hood in place. The sun was up already, somewhere beyond the towering peaks that seemed to surround the abandoned refuge, its rays and its warmth still hours away from touching the valley. Yet, despite being shielded from the sun during majority of the day, the flora of the valley was lively enough to begin reclaiming the asylum. Vines grew thick and tough against its pale walls, with dewy mahogany covering more of the tawny roof each day. They were close to the entrance, passing under an arch of greenery that might’ve bloomed with white roses once, when Randall approached a slab of stone that stood nearby and pushed some of the leaves away.

“Sanatorium of Draconus” it said in finely carved letters, and beneath it, in old Coronian: “Come ye weary, and rest!”

“Oh, I bet,” Randall said with a grin. All of these places had a nice one-liner to go with it, a nice little motto to go with the smiles of those on staff. And then you signed yourself in and wound up in a padded room with some warlock who fired lightning up your behind, claiming it was therapy.

While he was studying the sign, the blonde and her fair companions were already at the main entrance, testing the door. The wood of the double doors seemed dray and cracked at places, but the metal studs and strips that covered it seemed to sustain the elements quite well, sporting not a speck of rust. Lenwë was already working on it, humming a lighthearted tune that seemed to jimmy the lock little by little until it finally clicked and Randall could hear metal bars being moved within the door itself. Handy, but as it soon proved, rather pointless. When Christina gave the door a push, it refused to budge, even after she repeated it with the use of her shoulder.

“Let me try,” Randall croaked, shouldering his way between the two elves. “I might have the right tune for this one.”

He put his ear to the wood, knocked on it once, then took a step back and swung at it with his elbow. The door, the three bolts that kept it shut, the frame and a small chunk of the wall on each side fell inwards with a crash that woke what little wildlife still slept near the asylum. Randall allowed a satisfied smirk, then pulled it back once he remembered none could see it under his mask.

“Such subtlety! I am in awe,” Alasse said, obviously not in awe. More like mildly annoyed, Randall thought, like a mother that had to correct her young for the umpteenth time. The Ranger just shrugged, then turned to their blonde-haired leader who was already one foot inside the door. His hand grabbed for her shoulder, his iron grip more than enough to halt her advance.

“Wait,” But she already tore away from his clutch, only to come face to face with him. Her eyes were sharp and deadly, eyes of a hellcat that had her way and no other. Eyes of a leader.

“Let me take point,” Randall croaked, and when he saw her unmoved by his suggestion, he added: “You are the leader. Too risky for you.” Her eyes seemed to drift over his shoulder and to the two elves, but they seemed to have no objections. While elves generally disliked any loss of life, it was quite clear that they would live easier with losing Randall than Christina.

So it was the cloaked figure of Randall Audrin that led the way over the toppled door and into the asylum. The dust was still settling from the bombastic entrance, but it was soon quite obvious that a busted door didn’t decrease the property value by a whole lot. The decrepit look that the building displayed on the outside seemed to be reflected on the interior as well. The foyer was filled with scattered furniture, half of it crumbling under the assault of wormwoods, the other half well on its way there. The marble tiles beneath their feet were cloudy with soot, their last polish probably some ten years in the past. Up ahead, the large reception desk still looked rather sturdy, but there was a crashed chandelier in front of it, the crystal fragments scattered across the room. Dim beams of pale light fell through the thin windows that stood close to the high ceiling, far out of reach. Glass crackled under his footsteps as Randall led the way almost carelessly, his sword still safe in its scabbards at his hip. The sign to his left said “offices” while the right side offered the “admittance ward”. He looked towards Christina, nodded to the right, then continued that way after her silent approval.

The secretive Ranger barely put a foot inside the swinging doors when he noticed a flash of steel at his left. Instead of jumping back out into the foyer, however, he pushed forwards and against the left door wing, slamming it against his attacker. By then the second figure made its move from a darkened room just beyond the doors, swinging a hammer at Randall. The woodsman moved like a shadow, straight at the assailant and into his swing. He grabbed for the hammer shaft and stopped it as if it hit solid rock, then pivoted his body sideways, yanking both the weapon and its owner in a short arc just in time to parry the slash from the recovered foe. Using the hammer’s head as leverage, he pulled the hammer, the sword and the man to the ground. The sword-wielder recovered fast enough, though, planting his shoulder against Randall’s chest and making him stagger away and break hold on the hammer. The pair regained their composure and prepared for another round.

Randall’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword.

[Christina Bredith]

As the sword-wielding assailant brought his blade down for another round, his cry was drowned out by the slicing sound of steel against steel. Fragments of Christina’s whip-sword, joined by quiet tethers of blue energy, wrapped the oncoming blade in a firm embrace; a strong pull relieved the man of his weapon, and Rosebite reverted to its sword form with a satisfying snap. She moved between Randall and the two men with the weapon held out in front of her. Lenwë and Alassë flanked them, but Christina signaled them to stay back.

“Wait,” she said, shifting her gaze between the two men. “I don’t think these are our foes. Are you, gentlemen?” When the dust had settled from the initial scuffle, Christina could better see the men that had assailed them. While it was obvious that they had skill with their weapons of choice, the tattered rags clinging to their bodies were not what she’d expected of the asylum’s guards. “Inmates, I’m guessing? How did you break out and who’d you steal those weapons from?”

“We’re not inmates!” the man relieved of his sword snapped in a reedy voice. His hair was his lightest feature, almost as golden as Christina’s, and it fell in greasy tangles around his face. A heavy scruff of facial hair covered his cheeks and chin, all of it framing a pair of brilliantly blue eyes that were afire with desperation. The way he held his body told Christina volumes: not one muscle was out of place as he stood in opposition to them, and even as she could see the redness of anger rising in his face, he didn’t so much as flinch. This was a very experienced fighter; she’d wager Rosebite against a bronze dagger that he’d spent considerable time in an army.

“And they’re our weapons, if you must know,” the hammer followed. His voice was a deep, smooth baritone, and the man himself was built like a tree. His hair, brown touched with gray, was nearly as long as his companion’s, and similarly unkempt; it was evident that they had been here a very long time. “As to how we broke out, that’s of little consequence, but if you plan to stop us from leaving this place we will cut through you.”

“Four to two makes poor odds, human,” Alassë sneered. From the corner of her eye, Christina could see the woman’s blade shift as she tightened her grip on its hilt.

“You’re right,” the swordsman said. “Sure you don’t want to call another friend or two and even things up?”

Alassë was ready to leap forward, but Christina held out her hand. “Enough,” she commanded. “If you’re not inmates, then who are you?” The men glanced at each other uncertainly, and very briefly, before returning their attention to their foes, but they said nothing. “I don’t have time for games! Who are you?”

“Special forces,” the hammer responded. “My name is Lother, and my companion is Mikah.”

Randall spoke Christina’s thought before she could voice it. “And by ‘special forces,’ you mean…”

“We’re members of the Scarlet Brigade,” Mikah said. His voice was an uneven mixture of pride and uncertainty, uncomfortable to witness.

“Or were,” Lother corrected. “Pardon our hesitation, but you may know that our order’s reputation is… not as pristine as once it was.” Mikah snorted at that.

“I don’t understand,” Christina said. “If you’re members of the Scarlet Brigade, then what are you doing in those rags, locked away in this asylum?” Once again, the men hesitated. Christina glanced between them, and then at her companions. She led by lowering Rosebite. The elves followed, as did Randall, more hesitantly. Lother lowered his hammer, and Mikah collected his sword from where it had fallen, only to hold it peacefully at his side.

“Please. My name is Christina Bredith; I’m a deputy marshal with the Corone Rangers. My companions are Randall, also a Ranger, and Alassë and Lenwë, Raiaeran Bladesingers. Unless I’m greatly mistaking something, we are not your enemies.”

“What did you mean when you said that you were members of the Scarlet Brigade?” Lenwë asked.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Lother said. “The order counts us among their members no longer. They were proud, once, but we at least have not thrown that away.”

“Were?” Christina asked. “What do you mean? What’s become of them?”

Mikah laughed hard, and longer than strictly necessary. “They came all the way here and they don’t even know, Lother!”

“How could they?” Lother barked, cutting the younger man’s laugh off at the knees. “We had no idea either. Nobody does, until it’s too late.” He fixed his hard brown eyes on the group, moving from one to the next and back again. “Nevertheless, he’s right. It may be best for you all to leave this place. There are dark things happening here.”

Randall and Alassë only chuckled. Lenwë chose a dignified, unaffected silence. Christina put on her firmest expression and said, “We’re not leaving. The rumours about the Scarlet Brigade are no secret—are you saying they’re true?”

“That’s one way of saying it,” Mikah said. “If you want to really understate it, at least. So you’ve heard the rumours, but have you ever heard of vivisection?”

The elves both sucked in sharp breaths at the word, and Christina glanced back at them quizzically. “I don’t understand. What’s vivisection? What does it have to do with the Scarlet Brigade?”

“An evil thing,” Lenwë explained. “It is the dissection of a living being for no purpose other than to draw forth pure, unfiltered pain. There are those who can collect that pain as it is released, collect it as a form of energy. It is a thing of… of dark and terrible magics.”

Christina thought back to the moment in Underwood when Lenwë had touched the broken glaive to divine its source. There had been something in his eyes and in his voice then—everyone in that room knew that something terrible was behind the Brigade. His expression then had been only slightly worse than now; perhaps some part of him had expected news like this, but if that was so, it certainly did nothing to temper the blow.

Lother nodded his head. “The empire has brought dark sorcerers from Alerar and Salvar and the deep wastes of Fallien to perform the surgeries and the spells. The pain is extracted from whoever they can find. It started with the mentally ill, lining the streets of Radasanth with nowhere else to go since the sanitarium closed. By the time their numbers had grown too thin to be of use, the empire’s prisons had begun to swell with the ranks of rebel prisoners and political dissidents.”

“Let’s just say there’s plenty of room in those prisons now,” Mikah cut in. “Two birds, one stone.”

“Before all of this happened, the Scarlet Brigadiers were just soldiers trained well beyond the usual limits, to turn them into the elites of Corone’s armed forces. That wasn’t enough for the viceroys, at least not for Lord Harthworth. The war against you Rangers changed him, and not for the better. Few of our comrades had any chance to object; the rites were performed in secret, and by the time the brigadiers knew what was happening, the change had already been placed on them. A few did willingly accept the transformation. Mikah and I were among the few who managed to resist… though we could not escape.”

“So it’s true,” Christina breathed. Her voice sounded distant, like somebody else’s voice. She had expected a great deal from this mission, and it was almost a given that something dark was at work behind the scenes, but this… “They really are demons, then?”

“Demons, spectres, wraiths, who knows?” Mikah said, shaking his head. “And what’s the difference? They’re something beyond human now.”

“And something less,” Lother said grimly.

“We’ve got to stop this,” Christina said. Her voice was more resolute than she felt, but it gave her some small confidence to hear it.

“Well, good luck with that,” Mikah told them, giving a mockery of a salute. “We were next on their list of victims, to ‘teach a lesson to the rest of them,’ so we’ll just be on our way.” He moved to shove past the group, and Christina made no move to stop him.

Lother did. “Wait, Mikah,” the large man said, and reached out to grab his shoulder. That grip looked like it could crush iron if Lother wanted to. “I want to help them.”

Mikah sighed. “Don’t be stupid, Lother. What would Lyndah say about you risking your life for these people? You don’t owe them anything. Besides, they’re Rangers.”

“I’m not doing it for them,” Lother snapped. It must have been brusquer than he intended; his expression softened immediately after. “Not just for them. I’m tired of this war; I want to go back to Lyndah and little Felice and take them somewhere farther than far from here. The Empire and the Rangers can beat each other bloody for all I care. But this… I can’t let this continue. When the Empire runs out of prisoners to dissect, who’s next? Not someone who can fight back, I promise you.”

“This isn’t a good idea,” Randall told Christina quietly while the other two discussed. “What reason do we have to trust them?”

Christina could only smile small and wryly: the same might have been asked of him. “That’s a good question.” The man didn’t seem to share her amusement, nor did the elves. “Okay, look. If they really are prisoners, then they have their chance to walk out of here right now with no questions asked. And if they’re not—which I don’t believe, because the signs of hunger and prolonged muscle wasting are all over them as plain as the words in a book—then it’s still better to have them where we can keep an eye on them. I’d rather not find a knife in my back when we’re just about to reach our goal. The real Brigadiers will stab one through my breast just fine on their own.”

Besides, this large man reminded her of an old friend with all his talk of duty to his family and his tiredness of war. It would be nice to walk alongside someone like that again. She just hoped she could resist the instinct to call him “Marshal.”

“I’m coming with you,” Lother said firmly. It was hard to gauge whether he had heard their own conversation, but from the slightly unnecessary volume of his voice and the exasperated look on Micah’s own face, he seemed to be trying to cut the smaller man off mid-argument. “You’ll need someone to show you the way anyway; the longer you linger in here, the greater the risk of someone finding out. The only thing those mages are better at than dark magic is running away.”

Mikah made a strangled sound and slammed his weapon into its scabbard with more force than it deserved. “Stubborn old man! Why did I ever let you marry my sister? Fine, I’m coming too.” He moved to the larger man’s side, muttering, “But only because I’m more scared of her than I am of what’s downstairs.”

“Then lead the way,” Christina told them, gesturing. “I hope you’ll understand if we ask you to keep your weapons in their holsters until it’s time to use them.” Mikah grumbled, but his weapon was already away. Lother slid his great hammer into the leather straps on his back without a word. As malnourished as they looked and outnumbered as they were, it was probably an unnecessary precaution, but better safe than sorry.

“Let’s go, then,” Lother said, and began to lead them into the bowels of hell.

[Brother in Arms]

When the strong and the able waged wars, it was always the innocent that truly suffered. Randall knew this better than anybody in this little group of brave troopers, having had experienced the reality of it on his own skin in the past. There had been times when he too fought for a Cause, the significance of it so major at the time that the term justified capitalization. But Lother’s words reminded him that the Cause was usually just a tool, a means to an end, the end being the protection of those who couldn’t protect themselves, of those you cared about. Something Randall ultimately failed at, despite all his wartime feats. Songs were written only of the battlefields, and the history remembered only those fallen in direct strife with their foes. Ten years from now, nobody would remember burning villages, gallows lined with falsely accused conspirators, nobody would sing songs of the failed insurrections in some distant parts of the realm, where the brave and the bold were cut down like summer’s wheat because they got it in their head that they could make a difference. And nobody would lament a life of a simple girl caught in the whirlwind of death and destruction.

Randall was still caught in this bit of introspective when the pair of ex-inmates led them deeper into the compound. The first set of stairs took them to another level of cells, these looking much sturdier than those upstairs. The doors seemed to be made entirely of metal, each with a pair of locking mechanisms securing it to the frame, with only a fist-sized peephole at eye level. The hooded ranger peered into one of them, found a disfigured skeleton of what might’ve been a person once lying on a cot half-eaten by the moths and the roaches, and decided it was unnecessary to look at any more. If there were any survivors, Lother and Mikah would’ve released them already, and the sights in the other cells probably weren’t any more pleasing to the eye than the one he just witnessed.

The second subterranean level brought more of the same: slick stone walls covered with aged grime, the sickly-sweet stench of decaying flesh, an occasional oil lamp burning in a broken sconce, its flame shivering as if it too was afraid of the deeds done within these walls. The doors here, however, were half the size here and so were the cubical rooms behind them. Not tall enough for a man to stand straight nor wide enough for him to lie down, it was a wicked torture with no active torturing actually taking place. It wasn’t uncommon for dungeons to have such cells, Randall knew. You dropped a man in one of them and let him stew in his own sweat, piss and feces for a week or two, chances were you’d break him without actually breaking a single bone in his body. The fact that such holding cells were present here, in a place that was supposed to help the demented, only further confirmed Lother’s and Mikah’s tale.

“We should proceed in silence from here,” the aged veteran said, checking the straps that held his hammer against his broad back. “The main torture chamber is ahead and I’m not sure what awaits us there. We haven’t heard any activity from below in several days.”

“Maybe they left,” Mikah seemed to jump readily on the possibility. Lother’s bushy eyebrows drooped into a frown that said it was highly unlikely.

“Or they’re waiting for us,” Christina voiced the suspicion everybody seemed to share.

“Let us hope,” Randall’s voice rumbled. “It would make it livelier that this dreary place.”

“Does the place where my brothers died disturb you, Ranger?” Lother snapped at Randall, bringing himself a breath away from the shrouded woodsman. Two pair of eyes that have seen decades worth of conflict clashed, but Randall didn’t flinch, taking the words and the bad breath in stride. “Or are you so eager to die? Because the corrupted Brigadiers will destroy you.”

“They will try,” Randall shrugged, then added with an unseen smirk: “Hopefully they can do a better job than their uncorrupted brothers.”

Lother’s hand was clutched into a fist with white knuckles when Christina intervened, cool head on her shoulders as per usual. “Enough with the bickering, you two,” she said, her hand clutching Lother’s forearm lightly and ushering the man away from Randall. “If the Brigade is truly present here, we’ll have our hands full without being at each other’s throats.”

Lother seemed resistant to move at first, then snorted and shook his head as he moved away. Christina’s silvery eyes sought Randall’s in the shadow of his hood, lashed out at them with scorn of a superior officer, but it too failed to provoke a reaction from the hooded man. There was an inkling inside of him to remind the lass that, though they seemed like good chaps, these two had been in the Scarlet Brigade. And that before this horrible fate befell them, they most likely followed the Empire’s commands to the letter, which usually meant a lot of dead people. A lot of dead Rangers. But he figured this point would be lost in the current turmoil, so he decided to keep it to himself and endure the gaze.

“Come, we’re wasting time here,” Lother finally said.

“We should go to the observer’s chambers,” Mikah suggested. “It’s a good vantage point that overlooks the main chamber.”

“Yeah, it should give us an idea of what we’re facing,” the veteran said with a nod. After no objections were raised, he led the way down into the stuffy darkness once again.

***

“Definitely livelier than upstairs,” Randall commented, his jest lost on the dreary lot around him. They all stood behind the window of magical looking glass, which according to Mikah allowed them to observe the large torture hall below without being seen. And there was undoubtedly something to observe.

The room below looked like a small snippet of some early morning nightmare, the kind of a thing that rattled you on some idle Tuesday, bringing you from restless sleep and making you grateful for regaining consciousness. About as large as the royal ballroom in one of the castles Randall remembered from his days of youth, the torture chamber encompassed two full underground stories, placing him and the rest of the group on what would’ve been a balcony. However, that was where every parallel with the days of yore and beauty ended. Instead of crystal chandeliers hanging from the needlessly high ceiling, rusty chains were lined like metal vines, some ending with hooks, some with shackles, and some with meaty remains of a human being. Tall columns, reaching for the sky with their crowns splitting and forming stone arcs above, were ornamented not with gold and mahogany, but dried blood and nailed bodies instead. Large tables scattered around the floor, which in his memory were laden with exotic foods and beverages, now bore the weight of shiny hatchets and rusty saws and curved blades with their sharp edges twinkling in the light of the oil lamps. Iron maidens instead of wardrobes, stretching racks instead of card tables, pillories instead of statues of some local heroes, the place was set for a royal dance of death.

But the paraphernalia on display wasn’t what everybody was looking at. Lined up in between the tables and the torture devices were shadows given form and depth, the boogeymen of the Empire, the Scarlet Brigade. Randall counted sixteen of these wraiths, each with a monstrous glaive at its side, standing with an unearthly calmness of something no longer alive.

“I reckon it’s foolish to hope there’s a way around that unholy lot,” Lenwë said with a smirk. But it was a feeble thing that smile, the memories of the dark taint he felt when he had touched one of those glaives reminding him of the peril they were all in right now.

Lother shook his head. “Only one way to the bottom level, and it’s on the other side of that ghastly room.”

“Maybe we can lure them out, cause a commotion on the upper levels and draw them away from the entrance,” Christina spoke with a distant tone, voicing her line of thinking to nobody specific. There had to be a way. They were so close to the very heart of this beast that terrorized Corone.

“I doubt it.” It was Alassë that spoke up, even her haughty demeanor defeated by the view below. “They seem to be placed with a specific purpose of guarding the entrance. I doubt they would flinch even if we set the entire building ablaze.”

“We have to do something,” Christina said in an exasperated whisper.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Mikah insisted. “Not with three times our number. Hells, not even with ten times. These... these things. They’re uncannily strong. I’ve seen them cut down two of my brothers before they even managed to draw their blades. You remember, Lother. We cannot win here!”

“I fear he’s telling the truth. It is rather odd, though. There are usually no more than two or three of them here,” the veteran said with a nod towards the looking glass.

“It’s a welcoming party,” Randall finally spoke. While the rest discussed their strategies and propositions, the robed Ranger kept looking over the room, his eyes soaking in all the details, all the little nuances that could be useful. Finally he turned to the group, looking a bit like a Brigadier himself with the light of the room beyond the glass encompassing his shrouded form. “We didn’t exactly make an unnoticed approach. They knew we were coming. They are prepared to protect their secrets. And they know we are here, prattling about useless tactics.”

“Useless, eh?” Lother snorted. “And I guess you have a better idea.”

“I do.”

“Well, out with it.”

“It’s simple. I will make a passage for you. And you are going to help me,” Randall said, lifting his arm and pointing his finger at the hammer-wielding Imperial. None of the five looking in his direction seemed overly impressed so far, so he continued to elaborate. “That pillar over there at the south-west corner of the room is weak. If we topple it, it should bring the balcony down. The combined weight should tear a hole in the floor for you to make your way to the lower level. Simple.”

Lother offered a stifled chuckle as a response, Alassë shook her head in another patronizing denial and Christina put her hands on her hips. Still unimpressed, Randall concluded. It was Lenwë that spoke, the wiry majestic elf approaching the woodsman with an almost benevolent grin. “Friend, even if you can be sure of the collapse creating a passage, there is still a matter of over a dozen wraiths. They will be upon us before we even get to this hypothetical hole. It’s a brave idea, but...”

“Can you do magick, elf?” Randall interrupted, seemingly ignoring the point that was brought up.

“I am a Bladesinger, human.”

“Could you make fire in the palm of your hand?” Randall continued.

Lenwë seemed almost insulted by the question, but if the hundreds of years taught him anything, it was patience, especially with the human kind. He uttered a tune in a delectable whisper and his hand came alive with blue flames, the tongues lashing at the darkness with eerie calmness. But then Randall made a blisteringly fast step and got face to face with the elf, his hand shooting for the elf’s forearm. And before the fingers even touched the ancient flesh, the fire was snuffed out.

“Try again, Bladesinger,” the ranger said, releasing the grip but staying toe to toe with his fair companion. Lenwe’s sooth pale face crumpled into a questioning frown, but he ultimately shrugged and gave it another go. The tune was there, as pretty as a maid on her wedding day, but no fire came to life on his palm.

“I have this... condition,” Randall said, turning away from the group and approaching the window again. “Magick fails in my vicinity. And these creatures down there are wrought with magick. They are pain and anguish and fear and anger bound together with shackles of magick. They cannot touch me. But I cannot both keep them at bay and collapse that column. I need someone to help out. So, how hard can you swing that hammer, Imperial?”

Lother allowed a guttural laugh before he unfastened the hammer from his back. He put it on his shoulder leisurely and joined Randall at the window. “Hard enough, Ranger. Hard enough.” Then, after a short pause during which nobody could come up with a plausible objection to a ludicrous plan. “You’re one crazy bastard, you know that? You should be locked up in here somewhere.”

“Probably. But who’s madder? The lunatic of the one following him?” Randall said to the burly man. He turned, came face to face with the fair blonde Deputy. “Just be ready to move when that thing comes tumbling down,” he said to her, then went out the door.

“Or be ready to run if it doesn’t,” Lother added.

***

Lother Witherson didn’t have a death wish. Sure, he had encountered death many times before, witnessed all its faces, recognized its reek a mile away, but he never quite made the transition to the state of mind where he didn’t care whether he lived or died. He was simply good at spreading death around, a skill for which he had been recruited in the Scarlet Brigade back in the day when they had been an honorable outfit, formed to protect the high government officials and execute their commands. He was never a zealot, never ready to do thing at any cost, never lost his soul somewhere in the midst of all the demise around him. He had simply been a man doing his job, a good soldier. And that was exactly what brought him in this particular pickle.

The ex-Brigadier stood halfway up the last stretch of stairs that led down to the torture room, one eye on the insane Ranger that strode in without even a sword drawn, the other on his target, the white marble column with a visible crack running down the side of it. The plan wouldn’t work. There was no bloody chance it would work. Dispelling a measly fireball was one thing, something any hedge mage could do, but taking on a room full of Scarlet Brigade members... What the hell were they doing here.

Randall didn’t seem troubled by the lunacy of this tactic. He stepped into the room, his strides dignified, his head held high, and the moment his boots struck the grimy marble, the entire platoon of Brigadiers turned in unison towards him, slamming their glaives against the floor once they readjusted like a single organism. The Ranger wasn’t phased by the sight that would’ve struck terror in any sane person. He ventured far enough into the room to position himself between the pillar and the group of shadowmen, their hoods and postures following his movement perfectly. Once he was content with his position, he stopped, raised one hand, and summoned the wraiths to him with a simple gesture.

And, with a wail that sent the chains rattling and brought eardrums to the brink of bursting, they came.

The first wraith moved in a blurry flash, crossing the distance between its original position and Randall in a heartbeat. But even as it brought its gauntleted hand in a movement aimed to crush the Ranger’s neck, its blistering speed disappeared, the punch slowed down as if it moved through molasses. And when one of Randall’s hands caught its wrist, it let out such a terrifying shriek of agony that it cracked the one-way glass of the observer’s office. The shrouded woodsman brought another hand up and clutched the masked face of the Brigadier, silencing its deathly wail. With the crunch of metal, the skull inside the hood crumbled in Randall’s hands and the figure inside the robes disintegrated in a puff of smoke, leaving only an echoing scream of its existence. The other wraiths paused for a moment, hesitating even, long enough for Randall to pick up the glaive of the fallen Brigadier and issue another beckoning gesture with his free hand.

And then they came at him, in pairs, in threes, crashing against him like river against hard rock. Randall leapt over the sweeping strike of the glaive, ducked under another, sent the two reeling back with a horizontal sweep of his own, then brought the weapon back to parry an incoming thrust. He didn’t push the wraith away, though. He pulled it closer, close enough to grab its face with one of his hand and drain the magic essence from it completely. He swung the limp scarlet robe immediately once it was vacated by the Brigadier, tossing it as a shroud over an incoming attack, then pivoting around the missed slash and grabbing the wraith’s neck from behind. Another wait pierced the empty hallways.

The display nearly made Lother forgot what his role in all of this was. But once Randall got the entire group committed to destroying his insolent presence, the aged wardog made his move. He jumped down most of the stairs, then sprinted down the length of the room, keeping as close to the wall as possible. He didn’t stop once he came to the pillar, though. Instead, he used all his momentum, transferring it into an initial sideways swing that crashed against bare stone. The force of the impact made his arm numb up to his elbow, the marble exploding in a myriad of tiny sharp needless that sprayed his arms, his chest, his face. He didn’t care. He struck it again, and again, and again, each blow resounding throughout the room like a blast of a cannon. One of the Brigadiers noticed him after the third blow, disappearing on one end of the room and coming to existence right next to him, but before he got a chance to strike him down, Randall tackled the beast against the wall and held it pinned until it disappeared. And then he was gone again, jumping over tables, swinging around columns, wrestling benighted horrors, a gray shadow amidst the pitch black ones.

The close encounter reminded Lother of the urgency of his task. He went at it with renewed vigor, tearing away larger and larger chunks of gray stone until...

“It’s coming down!”