Malleus Maleficarum (Semi-Solo)

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

Yekaterina gave a weary sigh as she trudged up the hill back towards the small cottage on the outskirts of the village where she had been staying with the village herbalist, a venerable woman that everyone knew simply as Old Mother Aletta. The elderly woman had lived there for her entire life and had outlived most of her children and even a few of her grandchildren. She was lonely, and when Yekaterina wandered her way into town, the woman offered her a place to stay in exchange for help with various chores around the house and assistance in gathering roots and herbs and barks. Katya had originally planned to stay for only a few days to rest and recover, but every so often the elderly woman would slip up and call her “Sophya” absentmindedly, or she would talk about her daughters with longing evident in her voice, and each time it became harder and harder to find the resolve to leave. Eventually, when nothing seemed to go wrong for a while, Yekaterina decided that maybe, perhaps, for just a while, she could stay here.

As the days turned to weeks and then to months, Yekaterina fell into a rhythm in the sleepy town. At first the people were suspicious of her; the civil war was not so long gone that they did not remember deserters and bandits and mobs of the homeless desperate for food. But, they decided as more and more time passed, if Old Mother Aletta was letting her stay with her, the girl couldn’t be that bad. And soon even the most reluctant of naysayers found themselves won over; Yekaterina was quiet, polite, modestly dressed, eager to please, and there hadn’t been a death or serious injury in the village since she started working with Mother Aletta, even when Ivan broke his leg falling from a tree and the bone came through his skin. Beyond that, the children loved Katya, and she spent much of her free time with them, teaching them to read and write and spreading the word of the Ethereal Sway. Although there were several other literate people in the village, either they did not have the time, the inclination or the patience to deal with the children. But to Yekaterina, the bright-eyed boys and girls were a gift from the Sway themselves and she loved them dearly. So what, they would say, if occasionally she would stare off into the distance for a while, shivering as though cold? She was still a kind-hearted woman. Who cares, others would ask, if her arms bore scars that appeared self-inflicted? The war had hurt many people in many different ways. All they knew was that Katya was fast becoming just another member of their town, and a beloved one at that.

Today had been a long day, Yekaterina mused as she set her burden down for a moment to stretch the weary muscles of her back; the autumn chill was thick in the air, and frost was heavy on the ground in the morning. The old woman’s arthritis was flaring up again as she said it always did this time of year, so Katya was left to do most of the work alone today. As tired as she was, she still couldn’t help but feel as though this were somehow right; for the first time in a long time, Yekaterina felt as though she were actually doing something meaningful, actually helping people. I’ll need to get the boots patched before the first snowfall, and I know Mother Aletta hasn’t been keeping her firewood as well stocked as she should. Do we have enough oil for the lamps? She chuckled softly to herself. When was the last time the most important thing I had to worry about was oil for the lamps? She hefted the buckets of mushrooms she had been gathering that morning once more, feeling the soreness in her arms and the ache in her spine creep back in. No rest for the wicked, she thought with a little smile.

“Miss Katya, miss Katya!” Yekaterina turned and gave a strained smile at the little girl who followed her up the hill with seemingly boundless energy. Elisabet was the daughter of the village’s blacksmith and she possessed the open-eyed wonderment and optimistic adventurousness of youth. She was the ringleader of the town’s children, and took them on fantastic adventures that she spun out of thin air. She was something of a little tomboy, preferring to play the knight to the princess, and she enjoyed working with her father at his shop when he would let her. She was the first one to ask Katya to teach her to read, when all of the other boys and girls were too shy to talk to the new woman in town, and Elisabet was always following her around, asking about life outside of the hamlet. In many ways, she reminded Yekaterina of Astrid. The already tight smile on Yekaterina’s face began to falter, but the girl was oblivious. “Miss Katya, will you play with me? Can we play hide-and-seek?” Yekaterina turned away, blinking the beginnings of tears from her eyes. That part of my life is over; it does me no good to cry about it. Things are going well here. After giving a gentle cough to clear her throat and hide the weakness, she answered the girl. “I’m sorry, Elisabet, my back is really sore today and I don’t think that I’m quite up to—“

When she looked back, Yekaterina’s eyes widened in abject horror. The child’s face was gone, and in its place a monstrosity remained. One side of her head, from the jawbone to the eye socket looked as though it had been cooked over an open fire and then chewed upon. Large chunks of flesh were missing, including a section of the check through which blackened teeth were visible. The other half of its visage was equally disturbing, looking for all the world as though molten iron had been poured over a screaming face, capturing the image for eternity. The thing had no hair upon its scalp, only scores of bleeding, festering cuts that spelled vile slurs carved into its skin. When it met her gaze, Yekaterina felt a blinding pain pulsing through her eyes. A noise like a hundred voices speaking at once, some screaming, some laughing, emanated from the abomination’s tongueless mouth as it smiled at her. “Don’t you want to play, Yekaterina? We can’t wait to play with you.”

Yekaterina fell over backwards with a strangled cry, her hands scrabbling against the grass and she squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could. She sat there, rocking back and forth on the ground, quietly keening as Elisabet startled and bolted like a deer, screaming “Mama, mama!” at the top of her lungs as she loped down the hill back towards the hamlet. “Miss Katya’s sick again, mama!”

It was the third time in two weeks that something like this had happened, and just like every time before, the old wound in her back felt as though it were aflame. It was time to move again.

----------

“I still say I don’t understand why you have to go!” Old Mother Aletta’s voice was thin and reedy with age, but she still managed to speak forcefully when she was upset. “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I can treat you for the falling sickness. Tisn’t a thing to be ashamed of!” Although imposing should have been the last word anyone reached for when describing her, when Aletta planted her feet, put her hands on her hips and glared, men and women much younger and stronger backed down. She was quite used to getting her way.

Yekaterina however, was too exhausted to care. The two stood in the middle of the cottage near the table and chairs that Aletta’s second son had made for her, the warm glow of the fire lighting the room. They had been arguing for some time now, and were getting nowhere. “I’ve told you, Mother, it isn’t the falling sickness.” Her gaze left the elderly matron and lost focus, as though she were staring through the flames in the hearth. “This is… something different.” Tearing her gaze away from the fire took effort, but she had to do this. She had to! “I need to go. Today. No, yesterday. I need to be months gone! I never should have stayed in the first place!”

The old woman visibly deflated under Yekaterina’s words, and almost before her eyes Aletta shifted from the wise, witty herbalist to a tired, broken old woman. “Soph -- Katya, I just don’t understand.” the phrase, though repeated, could not have possibly sounded any different this time around. “Did… did I do something that upset you, dear? If I’ve wronged you, tell me, please. Just... don’t go? Don’t leave?” The words tore at Yekaterina’s heart, and every decent fiber of her being told her to comfort the woman, to stay, to promise that she would be another daughter to Aletta. But she couldn’t. Instead, she looked away once more. The Old Mother spoke up again, a bit more firmly this time. “What about the Church? You say it isn’t the falling sickness, and maybe it isn’t, but if I can’t help you with my skills maybe their healers can? If you petition—“

“No!” The vehemence of her shout clearly shocked the herbalist, and Yekaterina immediately regretted it. “I mean, no, Mother. I cannot go to the Church.”

The old woman gave Katya an appraising look, one that seemed to take in far more than she was comfortable with. Her eyes squinted and it felt as though she was staring right at Yekaterina’s soul. She pursed her lips before wagging a finger at Katya and saying, “Dear, I’ve seen those scars on your arms, and I know that book you hide like it’s got all the secrets of Alerar in it. I even know about that fancy blade you try to keep out of sight. I think I know your secret.” Katya felt her heart begin to race and her palms start to sweat. No, no, no, no, no! Not her, not now, not like this! But even as she begged the Sway she felt so far from to spare her this tragedy, she started looking around the room for a weapon. She noticed a large work knife on the table, almost eight inches long and heavy; if she had to, she would use that. She might even be able to get away before the town was roused by the screaming. “You were in the war, weren’t you?”

Yekaterina’s hand twitched towards the table before she could snatch it back under control. What? War… Oh, thank you Blessed Denebrial! Katya looked down in feigned shame, though she did not have to work hard for the emotion to seem real; her hand had gone for that blade. “I… am not proud of my past, Mother, and I don’t really want to talk about it. The war was truly horrifying, and I'm still repenting.” She looked up at Aletta through her lashes, trying to see what the herbalist was thinking.

But Katya hardly needed to worry; the judging stare had long since passed and the old woman was nothing but compassionate in her carriage. She tottered closer to Yekaterina and patted her gently on the arm. “There, there child. I know, I know; We all suffered. Why don’t you get some sleep, yes? We can talk about this idea of yours in the morning.” She smiled softly at Katya, and led her by the hand to the small room she had rented to the girl since her arrival. She tucked Katya into bed, just as she had done for years with her own daughters, and kissed her on the forehead. “Sleep well, and Sway watch over your dreams, Katya.” As soon as Yekaterina heard Aletta’s feet patting to her own room and closing the door, she grabbed her pillow and cried into it, letting her tears flow freely. Holy Alexei, what have I become? The knife… oh the knife! Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me…

When Aletta awoke the next morning to the first dusting of snow on the ground, Yekaterina was long gone.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

The virgin snow crunched softly beneath Yekaterina’s boots as she trekked down what she thought was the road, though it was hard to tell; the ground was coated in a thick blanket of white for as far as she could see, and the road this far from anywhere of importance amounted to little more than a dirt path packed down by horses and the occasional merchant caravan. It hadn’t been difficult to keep to when she left Mother Aletta’s house in the middle of the night, but more and more snow had fallen since then. For a while now she had been following two slight dips in the otherwise mostly flat terrain which she thought were likely ruts from wagon wheels, but it was entirely possible that she was off by a bit. Or by a few miles, for all I know. Yekaterina stopped to rest and blow on her hands to ease the chill that was settling in. She watched as her breath floated up through her fingers to the heavens like a cloud of incense from a censer carrying the prayers of the faithful. She wondered if her petitions would reach the Sway, or if, like the cloud of her breath, they would dissipate into the cold void until nothing remained.

Yekaterina shrugged and pulled her cloak tighter against the chill, thankful that at least there was no wind and that the snowfall had finally stopped; the sunrise may have painted the sky in deceptively warm tones of rich orange and vibrant scarlet, but the late autumns and especially the winters of Salvar, even early in the season, were merciless. Katya glanced around and took in the virtually empty landscape. There was a silence to the land, muffled as it was by the snow, as though it was sleeping peacefully through the winter, and her steps seemed to mar that serenity. Every so often a copse of leafless tress broke up the monotony, reaching their naked branches into arabesques that caught the dawn’s light and cast long, twisted shadows across the fields. Other than the trees, however, there was little else beyond the occasional patch of bushes here and there and the line of her tracks stretching back past the horizon. Katya mulled over the sight of her bootprints. Had she truly been walking for so long? She did not think so, but the irrefutable evidence was laid out before her. I’ve been walking for hours and haven’t seen a single soul, let alone another town… maybe I really did lose the path? Weariness she had been ignoring since her flight from the hamlet the evening before came back with a vengeance and sapped at her will to carry on. Yekaterina had not slept well for several nights and not at all yesterday, and she had worked hard during those days; exhaustion was catching up, and quickly. I could just sit here and take a rest for a while. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? To just lie down for a minute and forget my worries?

She shook her head violently, as though the motion could clear the thoughts which hung like cobwebs in her mind. She knew what was happening. She was beginning to freeze to death. Yekaterina knew there was little she could do at this point; she had her basic supplies in her pack, a flint and steel, a roll of tinder and other simple camp tools, but she had no hatchet, no saw and certainly no tent. Even if she got a fire going there was no telling whether or not another storm would roll through, or if the coming night would be bitter cold. There were too many variables, too many unknowns, and far, far too much at stake to risk it on a gamble. She decided that she needed to beg for help.

How could she describe Istaraesh? The question had come up several times since their first meeting, and with each repetition she produced the same unsatisfying answer: ethereal. All too aware of the nearly blasphemous implications of using that particular word, Katya still could not help but to draw a blank when she tried to come up with something better. But even it was inaccurate, much to her frustration; while the being had never manifested itself corporeally before her that she knew of, and it did not seem to directly interact with the world very often, Katya could attest to the immensity of its power as well as the width and depth of its knowledge. Since that first day in the forest, there had been… an awareness in the back of Katya’s mind, a knot of swirling emotions and concepts which she had quickly learned to tune out. That place in her head was not Istaraesh, but it was where she needed to go when she wished to speak with it, and it was where she focused her thoughts now.

To even say that the demon had a voice wasn’t accurate, or, rather, if it did have one, it did not use it to communicate with her. Oh, Katya could “hear” it to be sure, but it wasn’t a thing of the ears or even a phantasmal sound of the mind; when Istaraesh “spoke,” it was more a feeling that slipped through her consciousness, a series of simple images drawn from her memories and sensations transcribed into words, and over it all, a latticework of pain. “Yes? What do you need, Yekaterina?” The sun coming out from behind clouds became a beggar holding his bowl up to passersby in the street shifted to her own face reflected in the gently rippling waters of a pond. Other images seemed to flicker in the corners of her eyes faster than she could comprehend them, possible conversation that had not yet or would not happen. Pictures and thoughts flashed before her eyes like droplets of rain falling from the sky and disappearing just as quickly. Lightning arced through her nerves as she felt her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, the muscles of her jaw spasming uncontrollably. To an observer, it would appear as though Yekaterina were simply staring off into space. To Yekaterina, it was an excruciatingly painful, transcendental experience.

Mustering her willpower, she forced her way through the pain and focused on projecting her own idea back to Istaraesh: a fire in the hearth, the sensation of arms around her, the cottage in Loshad; warmth, protection, home. “I need shelter. Where is the nearest town?”

A long pause followed, and Katya felt panic swelling in her breast as she wondered if Istaraesh had finally decided to abandon her to her fate, if he was ready to claim his prize. Suddenly and without warning, Yekaterina felt as though she were cut off from her entire body, an observer watching through the windows of her eyes. She could still feel her arms and legs as they moved in painful jerks and spasms as though directed by someone unfamiliar with their use, but they would not respond to her will. She shuffled awkwardly in place, a captive in her own mind until she faced almost a quarter turn from the direction she had originally been walking, and then felt the presence release her muscles. “Walk this way and don’t stop; if you do, you will die.” A road stretching off into the distance and a hand catching a ball. The last image, though, shook Katya to her core; it had been a slice of memory from the day she had caught the neighbor’s boy Bjorn torturing a rat. He had hung the thing by its forelegs from the crossbeam of a gate in the stable and was slowly disemboweling it with a hoof pick when she walked in. Katya would never forget the noises the thing had made or the utterly calm expression on Bjorn’s face as he cut. The message could not be clearer, and holy saints above help her, Yekaterina believed it.

The communing had left her spent and she immediately bent her head and violently retched. Nothing came up, though; she had eaten little in the past few days and did not have the heart to steal from the old woman when she snuck out of her home. Her vision blurred, and ghostly doppelgangers of the pines and ashes danced across the snow. She closed her eyes, hopeful that if she did the nausea roiling in her gut would pass. Katya stood with her hands on her knees and drew shaky, wheezing breaths as she desperately tried to recover. It would be all too easy, especially now, to just fall over and sleep, but Ishtaraesh was correct; if she stopped now, she would die. She would be its forever. And as much as I deserve it, I’m not quite ready for the hellfire just yet. She moved first one foot, and then the other as she made her first steps down the path that Istaraesh had laid before her. One foot, and then the other. There could be nothing less.

----------

Hours later Yekaterina literally collapsed into a pile of straw inside the loft of a barn, nearly weeping with relief. Several of the cows stabled there huffed and lowed at her, but soon calmed themselves again; one human must have been much alike another to them, and Katya thought they must at least be grateful that she was not attempting to milk them with her chilled hands. She had found the farm on the edge of a moderately sized town, one she did not immediately recognize though that was hardly saying much, directly in the line that the demon had set for her. As she had been trudging in the cold she had entertained the notion that Istaraesh might have neglected to tell her that the nearest town was yet days away at her pace, but after a time she saw the faintest streamers of smoke rising into the sky and felt a flicker of hope in her breast. It seemed that fortune still smiled upon her, or that the fiend still wanted to toy with her, but as she curled up in a tight ball under layers of hay, Yekaterina could not find it in herself to care. She would live another day, and for now that was enough.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

From the moment she awoke, Yekaterina knew something was wrong. After her ordeal in the snow, she had slept the deep, dreamless sleep of someone far more innocent than she. Katya remained dead to the world as the rest of that day and then the night as well passed. Far from awakening rested the next morning, however, she jolted awake with a gasp as she felt something skitter across her back. Cold as it was outside, it was still not beyond the realm of possibility that bugs had survived within the shelter of the hay, but as Yekaterina reached her arm behind her to catch the offending insect, she felt another slither down her arm. She rolled out from under the pile, and checked over the edge of the loft to make sure no farm hand was working bellow. When she was sure the coast was clear, she stood up and brushed as much of the straw from her clothes and body as she could, and then looked down to pick off the annoyance. Her eyes went wide; the itching, far from being gone, had multiplied to that of a hundred tiny legs crawling all over her arms and hands. It was still there – everywhere – but she saw nothing. It was as though the bugs were roaming beneath her skin.

It dawned upon her as she scratched at her arm to ease the sensation that she could not hear the usual sounds of the morning, the crowing of roosters and clucking of hens or the whickering of horses. An icy ball of dread formed in her gut as she feared that Istaraesh had rendered her deaf somehow in addition to whatever this itching, crawling plague was. However, she realized that it wasn’t that she could not hear at all, but rather that her hearing was taken up by something else; a constant, low, whirring noise droned in her mind and drowned out everything else. It sounded like a multitude of voices, all speaking far too quickly and at a distance, too distorted to make out but too loud to ignore. If she strained she could hear the cows below her, but it made her head ache to try to listen past the buzzing.

Yekaterina snatched her pack from beneath the hay, threw her cloak over her shoulders before rushing down the ladder, completely without regard for any potential observers who might notice that she had stolen the night away in their barn. As she raced out the wide doors, she ran into a boy who could not have been more than fourteen, his face pocked with pimples and dusted with the first fine hairs of a beard carrying pails for milking the cows. Katya could not hear him over the din in her mind, but she saw his mouth open in shock before she barreled him over. She didn’t stop, or even look over her shoulder, afraid that whatever shout she did not hear might have alerted the farmer, or worse, his hounds. She took off down the road leading towards town, not sure whether she was running from the scene or her self.

----------

Running into town was, in hindsight, quite possibly the worst possible thing Yekaterina could have done. As though agitated by the press of the crowd, Istaraesh began broadcasting his usual stream of pictures and memories to Katya, but at a frenzied pace and with no logical pattern she could pick out; it seemed as though the demon were pulling memories at random and throwing them at her. She saw Copper, the dog her parents had bought her as a child trotting through a doorway and her grandfather sitting on a bench, though both had been dead for over a decade. A kite floated through the air at eyelevel, carried by a wind that wasn’t there, pulled by a child long since grown. As she trotted around the corner of a building, panting from the exertion of her run, she came face to face with a man wearing a rusted breastplate, blood splattered on his face, the mangled body of a man in a robe lying at his feet. The man gave Katya a manic grin and heaved a pilum at her. She screamed silently, feeling the air rush from her lips but hearing nothing as she dove out of the way of the javelin… and straight into a very real woman. The jostled woman stumbled back, barely catching herself against the brick wall of a nearby building before screaming and making crude gestures at Katya. Yekaterina tried to make soothing motions as she fled, but she was overcome by the rush of sights and sounds and the crawling under her flesh.

The pictures flickered faster and faster, passing before she could fully comprehend them, one blurring into the next, and the buzzing grew louder and louder rising from a dull roar to a cacophonous whirlwind. It was voices, she realized, and voices fit to make one’s ears bleed. “Run, quick, hide! Seek! We’ll find you! Scream your songs, sing your screams! It comes! It comes!” Yekaterina desperately ran through the streets, dodging passersby and vendor’s stalls alike in a vain attempt to escape the howling. She feared that she was truly hearing Istaraesh for the first time, and she was horrified. The being had mocked her, tormented her, feigned kindness and warmth, and terrified her, but it had always done so with the highest degree of control and precision, waiting for just the right moment to catch her off guard. This, however, was entirely new. If Yekaterina did not know better, she would think that Istaraesh was… frightened, or overwhelmed by something. What could make a demon shriek like that? She had no idea, but was certain she did not actually want to know.

Finally, she could take it no more. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!” Yekaterina screamed hands pressed futilely against her ears. Suddenly, as though obeying her command, everything stopped; the phantoms were gone, leaving only blackened spots and afterimages which quickly faded from sight, the infernal whirring had ceased completely, and the crawling sensation across her flesh was lifted… Right as Katya stumbled in front of a column of riders in the street. The lead horse reared back, its feet flailing in the air. Something in Yekaterina’s mind told her to fall to the ground, and she slipped backwards with a scream just in time to avoid the crash of the destier’s iron-shod hooves against the paving stones. The rider pulled back on her mount’s reins, and the horse whinnied and stepped back, its eyes rolling at Katya. A sick feeling overcame Yekaterina as she looked at the cracked pavement, realizing how close she had been to having her head caved in.

As Katya was staring at the ground lost in thought, a second horseman trotted forward and asked in loud voice, “Seeker Erika, are you alright?”

The rider whose horse had nearly killed Yekaterina, a woman, answered the man, “Yes, Alfred, I’m fine. Return to your place.”

“By your order, my lady.”

A very primal fear settled over Yekaterina, and she had to fight down the urge to howl; she would have gladly accepted all the terrors of this morning twice over if it meant she could be anywhere but in front of this group of people. Witch Hunters, as the name of their profession implied, made a living by enforcing the Church’s doctrines regarding mages and ritualists of all sorts. Katya was more than a rogue wizard at this point though; she was a full fledged witch, a dealer of forbidden blood magic and one guilty of consorting with fiends. There would be no mercy for her, no trial. She would be put to the question and summarily executed at best, if not killed in some imaginative way like burning at the steak or drawing and quartering. She felt certain that they must be able to see the brand on her back, must notice the hilt of her ritual blade sticking from her belt. Katya cringed and tried to make herself as small as possible and prayed to the Sway for some shred of compassion.

“Begging your pardon, madam Hunter… I’m terribly sorry, I’m not sure what came over me I…” Yekaterina ducked her head in what she hoped passed for a servile bow, but before she could make her escape she felt a hand seize her arm, squeezing painfully tight. She looked back up and saw the woman on the horse staring intently at her with frigid, piercing, blue eyes. The woman had shoulder length brown hair and an unremarkable face except for the intensity of her epression. She wore an unadorned leather vest over a chain hauberk coated with something to cut down the metallic gleam. Belted around her waist was a longsword in a plain, black, boar-hide sheath, and a quiver of bolts. Over her shoulder Katya could see the arms of a wicked looking crossbow.

“How did you know?” The woman asked in a tone which matched her gaze perfectly.

“I… I’m sorry? Know what?” Yekaterina tried to meet that stare, but felt bile rising in her throat. This is it… this is how I die.

“How did you know I am a Witch Hunter, child?” The woman repeated slowly, but without an ounce of condescension; she was not mocking Katya, only speaking slowly and precisely so there could be no doubt about what she had said. Yekaterina felt suddenly utterly naked under those eyes, as though with a glance the Hunter could see the depths of her depravity. For all she knew, perhaps the woman could.

“Y-y-your companion called you Seeker, my lady. Which would mean you are an officer within the Order of the All Seeing Eye.”

The Seeker, Erika? grunted non-committally at that. “Not many peasants would know that, girl; you’re quite well versed on the hierarchy of our Order. How did you become so familiar with us?”

“My parents were lay disciples to the cleric in my hometown, madam Hunter.” A truth, but a half-truth at most; Yekaterina’s parents were very devout followers of the Church and participated in the lay ministry, but it wasn’t until her time in the seminary that Katya learned what she knew about the Order of the All Seeing Eye. One of the things she learned, however, was never, ever to lie to a Hunter. They would know. Yekaterina did not know if that was actually true, but she was not eager to test the lesson now.

The hand on Katya’s arm squeezed even tighter, and she suppressed a whimper. “I see… and where is your home?”

Yekaterina paused, her mind scrambling for an answer. If she answered truthfully and explained that she was from Archen, there was a good chance the Hunter might have been stationed there and could inquire about her family name. If that came out, there would be no hiding from her past; her parents were very involved with the Church in Archen, and this woman might be able to put two and two together. So, she reached for another half-truth. “Loshad, my lady, a small town to the west of Archen.”

The Hunter raised her eyebrows in an expression on anyone else Katya would have called ‘surprised,’ but she was sure that it was feigned, an attempt to appear conversational; nothing so simple would catch this woman off guard, and there was nothing friendly about the grip she had on Katya. “Truly? One of my charges is from Loshad. Maybe she knew you. May I ask your name?”

“Yekaterina” No matter how dangerous the truth, a lie would be worse.

“A pretty name for a pretty girl.” The Hunter gave a Yekaterina a flat smile that never touched her eyes – so cold! – and her cool tone did not change minutely. “I’m sure Astrid will be pleased to hear that someone else escaped the pillaging.”

It took a second, but once the connection was made, Yekaterina felt her entire world rock on its very foundations. Astrid is a Witch Hunter? It may not have been her birthplace, but Katya had lived in Loshad long enough to know that there was only one Astrid who lived there, and certainly only one young enough to enter the initiation for the Order of the All Seeing Eye. As much as she didn’t want to believe it, Yekaterina knew that this Erika had no reason to think that Astrid’s name would be personally significant to her; if she knew that much she would have already had Katya dead to rights. It was the sort of deliciously cruel twist of fate that would have pleased Istaraesh to no end, but the demon was silent and Katya had no doubt that whatever had happened to set Astrid on that course had nothing to do with the fiend. Ironically, Yekaterina herself may have actually been that deciding factor. After all, she was the one who had taught Astrid the vast majority of her knowledge about the Church and who had inspired such zeal in the girl. In a way, it wasn’t really surprising at all; Astrid had been a diligent student of theology and was devout to a fault, but she was also the daughter of a trapper and had the wilderness flowing through her veins. That untamed drive had been one of the things that had attracted Yekaterina to her. It was only natural that she might find her way into an Order which was both faithful to a fault and which extolled the virtues of the hunt. Even knowing that it made a certain kind of sense, however, did not kill the anxiety which threatened to floor Yekaterina.

The Seeker jumped on Yekaterina’s panic with a predatory gleam in her eyes. “Oh, had you not heard? Loshad was burnt to the ground years ago during the war. I’m surprised you didn’t know. Unless you were mistaken about your home…”

Katya’s eyes remained unfocused, her mind elsewhere, but a part of her registered something; she thinks I didn’t know about Loshad. She has no idea about Astrid! The thought should have been a relief, but given that the Hunter still seemed intent upon putting her to the question, it was something of a hollow victory.

Before the woman could continue her interrogation, a man in a simple leather duster rode up from the opposite direction and reigned in his horse as he saluted the Hunter. “My lady Seeker, the cleric waits for you inside the church.” He looked at Katya, and then back at Erika. “If… this isn’t a bad time?”

With a grimace, the Seeker let go of Yekaterina’s arm, and Katya had to fight the urge to immediately rub the place she had released as she stepped quickly away. There would be a bruise there, no doubt. “No, thank you, we will go and meet Her Grace now.” The column started forward once more, and Erika looked back over her shoulder at Katya. “Goodbye, Yekaterina. Walk in the light of the Sway.” The Hunter’s tone left no doubt that the phrase had been a command, not a blessing.

Katya watched for a moment as they rode towards the church at the corner where four roads came together in a large cross-shaped plaza before she became aware of the muttering around her. Observers had gathered in the street, watching the Churchwoman question the lunatic who had ranted and screamed as she plowed through the crowd. This was exactly the sort of attention Yekaterina wanted – no, needed – to avoid. Ducking her head and giving thanks to the Sway for her at least temporary salvation, she fled down the nearest alleyway and lost herself in the crowds.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

Two days had passed since the incident with the Hunters, and Yekaterina was beginning to feel a little safer here. The people seemed to have completely forgotten the madwoman dashing through the streets, and she seen neither hide nor hair of the cold-eyed Seeker since that morning. Even Istaraesh had been quiet, for which she was immensely grateful; whatever that had thrown it into such a rage was either gone or the demon had adjusted to it, because she had not been plagued by visions or nightmares either. A shudder passed through her and she rubbed a hand unconsciously against her arm, feeling the bruise the Seeker had left there. The last thing she needed right now was for the fiend to start having another episode. Still, things were looking up. It is hard to not look up when you’re at the bottom of the well though. If her luck held out, she would be able to rest here for a few more days, get her bearings, and move on to somewhere else before she started to get too comfortable, to feel too safe. If, though, was the sort of word that built little beyond dreams and wishes.

Even a quickly silenced scream carried a long way in the quiet of the evening in a town of this size, and Yekaterina was not such a long ways away. Her head swiveled towards the origin of the ragged cry, a dingy side street where she saw a group of people were surrounding someone, a woman judging by the scream. Fists and boots flew forward, raining down on her from all directions and striking the woman until even her muffled gasps and moans cut off. Realizing that no one else was there to act, Katya made a split second decision and shouted at them. “Hey! What the fuck are you doing?! Get away from her!” She drew her dagger and ran towards the teenagers with teeth bared. The boys startled and ran away down the street, and one threw away a knotted burlap sack that hit that ground with a heavy thud.

As she stood there panting quietly in the gathering darkness, Katya realized how lucky she was; if the young men had any discipline or even a moment to think, they certainly would have realized that one frail woman, armed or not, posed little threat to their group and she would have found herself in no small danger for all of her good intentions. As it was, the situation was far from resolved. She took in the grim sight before her: The girl lying on the ground huddled in the fetal position was covered in ugly blue-black bruises, and her eye was already beginning to swell shut. The split in her lip looked particularly bad, oozing dark red blood down her chin in a rivulet. It was hard to say, Katya had never been very good about guessing people’s ages and the injuries certainly did not help, but she thought the young woman might be in her early teen years; her torn, dirty, rumpled tunic covered the swell of budding breasts, and her face had little of the baby fat that often clung determinedly to children. She had no idea why the boys had decided to beat the girl into a near coma, but she had her own awful suspicions.

Turning away from the child Yekaterina walked over and kicked the bag the teen had thrown away, feeling several small, hard lumps in it. Rocks. They were beating her with a bag of rocks. Her fingers squeezed tight against the wire-wrapped hilt of her dagger until she could feel her hand shaking. Even children can be monsters, she thought bitterly. The thought of Bjorn torturing the rat in the stable came to her unbidden. Sometimes especially children… striding back to where she had just left, Katya knelt down on the paving stones next to the still comatose victim, feeling for her pulse. She found it fairly quickly, but it was thready and weak. As she leaned over and pulled up one of the girl’s eyelids, Yekaterina saw that the pupil was dilating and closing even as the light remained constant; she was most likely concussed. Katya hissed in vexation. In this creeping cold, and without a single clue as to where the girl lived – or if it was even safe there, for that matter – there was little chance the victim would survive if left on her own, and there was nowhere Yekaterina could take her without drawing attention to herself.

Yekaterina gnawed on her lip, her eyes darting up and down the street. Most honest folks were in their homes, preparing dinner, or were already deep in their cups at their favored taverns, but all it would take was one; one person catching her at exactly the wrong moment and the cry would be raised, the Hunters hot on her heels. Still… she looked back down at the girl, listening to her shallow, labored breathing. Children are monsters? You’re the one thinking about leaving her here to die in the cold. It was true, though; she was considering it carefully. What is the measure of a life? Is it worth the risk? The questions lay heavy on her mind as she stared down indecisively. Is it worth the risk of not acting? What is left of me if I don’t? Ultimately, the guilt won out and she quashed her fear as best she could. With one last fretful look down the abandoned road Katya pulled the girl into her lap. As she held the shivering girl as best she could, Yekaterina slid her arms around her waist and pressed the cool blade against her palm. As she reached towards that chaotic bundle of thoughts in the back of her mind that was not Istaraesh, she drew the edge down sharply with a gasp. The brand on her back blazed with pain, and images whirled at the edge of awareness, but she focused and willed the blood to do its work.

The girl’s pale green eyes slammed open and rolled back in her head, her body spasming on the uneven cobblestones of the street. Before Katya’s eyes the blood from her palm floated towards the myriad injuries covering the child’s body in thin, vivid, crimson ribbons. Even the droplets coating the blade seemed to be repelled from the bronze surface, rolling down the fuller until they fell from the point, only to drift back upwards and join the rest. The streams danced through space and touched lightly on the young woman’s bruises and cuts, but left nothing to mark their passing; the dark liquid seemed to disappear once it touched her, bruises disappearing and cuts mending with impossible speed. A particularly large band wrapped itself around the girl’s hair like an unholy halo. Soon though the last of the blood disappeared and Yekaterina slumped against the ground. Healing was taxing, but judging by the way the girl’s eyes flickered open, it had been successful.

The child looked around with a vacant expression, clearly still dazed from the healing. Her hand shakily reached up to touch her face, roving from lip to eye as she felt for the injuries she knew should have been there. When her eyes lit on Katya and her bleeding hand, and she realized she was being held, however, she drew a deep, panicked breath and began to scream. “Witch! Witch!” The child howled as she thrashed in Yekaterina’s arms, her elbow flying up and catching the woman in her eye with a sharp jab. Katya fell to the ground with a startled gasp, her free hand clutching at her eye. The girl tore herself from Yekaterina’s arms and darted down the street, screaming for help the entire way. The shock only lasted for a second before Katya herself bolted to her feet and ran as hard as she could the other way down the road; when an injured townswoman was screaming bloody murder about a witch, it wouldn’t be long before the Hunters came to investigate, and if Yekaterina was still there she would be as good as dead. The memory of Erika’s cold eyes filled her mind. Not as good as, she would be dead.

Something heavy and hard struck her in the back of the head as she ran, and she fell to the ground with a groan. Stars danced before her eyes as she lay dazed on the ground, and when Yekaterina rolled over she saw a furious man bearing down on her. “Filthy apostate! What are you doing to our children?!” Spittle flew from the man’s mouth as he screamed at her, his hands squeezing her arms in a vice-like grip. She tried to find her voice, to explain what she had done, to say anything, but the man pulled back an arm and slapped her hard across the mouth. “Answer me you bitch!” His hand drew back to deliver another blow before Katya could even think of responding. She panicked, and before she realized what was happening her hand was slamming forward over and over again, driving the ritual blade into the man’s innards. Her thrusts were unpracticed and unaimed, but at this distance they hardly needed skill to do their grim work. Soon she felt his body go limp and become a dead weight atop her as warm, wet liquid seeped into her shirt.

She pushed the corpse off of her with a grunt, and clumsily climbed to her feet. She drew a ragged breath and stared at the wide-eyed shock that would never leave the man’s face. Yekaterina felt hot tears pouring down her cheeks as she whispered frantically, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” She heard the sound of heavy boots thudding down the street, heard the whistles of the watchmen and saw bobbing torchlights coming her way. The soldiers would be here soon, and she could not be here when they arrived, especially not now with a dead man’s blood covering her body. She ran faster than she ever had in her entire life, jumping potholes and dodging trash left in the road by the vendors who had long since packed up their stalls for the day. She did not question where her second wind came from, only drew on every last ounce of strength she had to put as much distance between herself and the scene of the crime as she could. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she chose a random side street and ducked behind one of the buildings. Judging by the sounds emanating from inside, the place was an inn with a raucous clientele. It was the perfect place for a drifter to be found sleeping against the side of the building. Katya sat down behind one of the rain barrels, and prayed to the Sway for deliverance.

While Yekaterina sat there huddling beneath her cloak in the shadows still trying to catch her breath, she reached behind her head tentatively to see if she could locate the contusion left from the man’s fist, she found nothing under her searching fingers. In fact, she realized with dawning dread, she felt fine. Better than fine, actually; she felt better than she had in days. It did not take a sage to realize what had happened, and the welling dread became a torrent inside of her. Looking down at the dagger she had not stopped to wipe on the man’s coat in her flight, Katya saw to her horror that the blade was perfectly clean, the bronze shining malevolently bright in the pale moonlight. Even her tunic, which should be soaked through with gore, was dry and clean against her skin. She, in contrast, felt unclean, and wanted desperately to wash away the feeling as she wondered if the dead man’s blood now coursed through her veins in tandem with her own. She sheathed the blade behind her back, desperate to get the filthy thing away from her and then scrubbed her palms against her thighs. It did nothing to alleviate the sensation of blood on her hands.

She listened intently to the sound of the search as men shouted to one another and whistles rang shrilly in the cold night air. It would be only a matter of time before the manhunt reached this street, and Yekaterina used the precious time to compose herself as best she could. Hopefully it would be enough. The sound of iron-shod boots came closer and closer, until suddenly a bright light was thrust in front of her, forcing Katya to hold a hand up to shield her eyes. The acrid smoke from the torch caught in her nose and she choked back a cough as she waited for her sight adjusted to the wavering torchlight. Soon enough, though, she was able to make out man standing before her. He wore the uniform of the local watch, a burnished conical helm a padded jerkin sewn with metal scales that gleamed in the flickering light, and had a heavy, iron studded cudgel hanging on his hip. Not a Hunter, thank the Sway! Katya blinked slowly and smacked her mouth, hoping the man would think he had roused her from sleep.

“Miss, you need to get inside. Now. A witch has killed two people tonight and is still out there.” He looked her over, no doubt checking to see if she had weapons on her, or if there was any blood on her clothes. Not for the first time, Yekaterina felt a strange sort of gratitude for the very thing that caused her so much grief.

Feigning wide-eyed, fearful innocence, Yekaterina stared up at the watchman with what she hopped looked like genuine concern. “T-truly, sir? A witch, here? Are the Hunters coming?”

The man nodded, both in acknowledgement of the question and in satisfaction that she wasn’t his prey. “There is a company of them here in town tonight, thank the Sway. If they weren’t… Well, they are, so that’s that.” A dark expression crossed his face, but he nodded again, this time perhaps to reassure himself.

She sighed, and gave the man a fawning look. “Thank you, captain. Please be safe? This woman sounds like a monster.” You have no idea how much of one she is. Yekaterina drew in a deep breath and watched the man carefully; she had not meant to let slip that she knew “the witch’ was a woman. The word was used to describe men and women who abused the Gift, and even a little mistake like that could bring and end to her charade.

She needn’t have worried, however; the watchman puffed up self-importantly, as most people did when one assigned them a rank higher than they actually held, and clearly thought nothing about her mistake. “It’s nothing, ma’am; we’ll catch the bitch and make her burn for this, mark my words. There’s no hiding from the Hunters.” He paused, and then added for good measure, “Or the Watch.” He offered her his hand which Yekaterina took gratefully; she did not think she could have stood unaided with as hard as her legs were shaking. “Go on inside. Sway and Saints preserve you.”

“Sway and Saints preserve you and aid your search, captain. Thank you for the warning.” With a slight bow to cover her unsteadiness, Yekaterina wobbled her way to the door and slipped inside the inn. If she looked haggard and fearful, no one there commented on it. After all, hadn’t she heard? A witch had been butchering people in the street! Katya could have laughed if she wasn’t so close to weeping. She sat down in a corner booth and drowned her terror in the largest tankard of ale she could buy.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

Yekaterina sat huddled on a bench under the cover of the tavern’s awning, watching the procession snake by through the frigid autumn drizzle. Amidst the sobbing, the disbelieving stares and the scowls she saw many of the people draw their cloaks tight and hunch over against the rain. It was a dark day for a dark deed. The family did not have the luxury of waiting for the weather, though; even a few days from now the ground could be frozen hard and they might have to burn the body instead. It seems they had run out of time in more ways than one. The hooded cleric leading the line swung a covered censer, the feeble puffs of incense barely making it into the air before being cut down by the rain. Several musicians, probably members of the family with instruments judging by the general lack of ostentation in the funeral, played wailing dirges on pipes and beat a slow, doleful march on the drum. She was not the only one watching from the sidelines, she noted, but most of the other observers only popped their heads out of doors and windows for a moment to see what the noise was before quickly going back inside. Katya couldn’t blame them; she wished she could be sitting in front of a fire right now too, but that was not what she needed to be doing. She saw a small boy clutching at the hand of a crying woman in the long line, staring up at her with confusion evident on his face. Like as not he had no idea what was going on, but that death certainly waited for no one to be ready for it, let alone to understand.

The door to the Golden Horn – or the Clarion Call, depending on who you asked; the sign bore only the image of a bright yellow instrument with a circular tube, no words – the inn she had found at the end of the previous night, opened with a creak next to her and let out a tired looking man with hollow eyes and a grim set to his mouth. His blonde hair was disheveled and his clothes looked rumpled as though he had slept – or rather, not slept in judging by the bags under his eyes – in them. He held a steaming cup of what smelled like grass tea in his hands as he watched the procession pass by. He took a carelessly deep sip from his mug, and bit off an oath as the hot liquid burnt his tongue. Yekaterina shifted a little further away on the bench, hoping to distance herself from him. She had absolutely no desire to interact with any townsfolk in foul moods today. Upon seeing the movement, however, he must have realized he was not alone and gave her a quick bow, careful not to spill his drink. “Apologies for the language, miss. I hope you’ll forgive my lack of manners, but today is not a day for kind words.” Katya noted with mild interest that he was speaking in Tradespeak instead of Salvic. A man used to speaking to people from many different countries. A merchant? An oddity, but not surprising; most people could speak at least enough Tradespeak to get by. He turned back to the scene in front of them before giving a sudden double-take and looking back at her. “Wait… you’re that woman from last night, the one sleeping outside.”

Yekaterina gave a start, and examined the man closely. She had not recognized him in the light of day, and especially not without his armor and helmet, but upon closer inspection she realized he was the watchman who had told her to go inside last night. A breath she had not realized she had been holding slipped from between her lips. There was danger in being known too well anywhere, but at least he wasn’t calling her a witch. Still, she forced a small smile and nodded up at him. “I am, and thank you again for the warning, captain; even if there wasn’t a murderer on the loose, it was a cold night last night, and I would not have liked to be woken up by freezing rain. I never did catch your name though.”

“Claus. Patrol Leader actually, of the Ostford Watch.” He grinned at her over the edge of his mug. “Not a captain. Not yet anyway.” After carefully blowing on the steaming cup, he took a sip and used the pause to study her. After an appreciative hum at the seeping warmth, he continued. “So, why are you outside on a day like today? Did you know the family?” He jerked his head towards the tail end of the slow moving line that was already passing them in the street.

Yekaterina adjusted her cloak tighter around her shoulders and shifted her pack on the bench before motioning for Claus to take a seat; it felt like it had been a long time since she had had a normal conversation with another person, and despite the risk it posed, the break in her loneliness was… nice. “My name is Yekaterina, and no, I didn’t. I was… a nurse, in the war. After you explained what had happened last night I couldn’t fall asleep. I just kept wondering if I could have done something, anything to help. I wish there was something I more I could have done, that I could have saved him somehow. When I heard the pipes, I came out here to pay my respects.” All of it was true, certainly; she did wish that things could have turned out differently – did she ever – but the half-truths and dodging galled her. She had become quiet adept at not-quite-lying.

Claus gave a mirthless laugh but smiled at her gently as he took the proffered seat. “You’re a good woman, Yekaterina, and it is kind of you to offer, but another person there would only have meant another body. So, in that case, I’m glad you weren’t.” He leaned back against the whitewashed timber wall with a weary groan. “Sway above but I’m ready to fall over.”

Treading carefully, she decided to ask, “Has there been any news? Did you catch the witch?” Obviously, they hadn’t, but the man was clearly tired and looking to talk, so perhaps she could draw some useful information out of him. It saddened her to realize how manipulative she had become since binding with Istaraesh, but if the choice was between using people and burning at the stake, she would use people until they were completely spent. “You’re a good woman, Yekaterina…” Like hell I am.

The watchman shook his head forcefully and scowled, his brows drawing tight against his eyes. “No. Not even the Hunters could find any sightings or rumors of her. And,” he gestured with his free hand at the sky, “with this rain there’s not a chance in Haida that we’ll be able to track her unless the Hunters call in a Church mage, and I’m pretty sure the nearest one of them is days away at best. The residue will likely be gone by then.” He smacked his empty fist against his thigh in impotent rage, then closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “No, we’ll keep up the search, of course, but no one is really holding out hope at this point.”

Yekaterina coughed into her hand to hide her shock. It hadn’t occurred to her that the Hunters might have an Empowered Priest with them, one who would be able to read the telltale signs of witchcraft and lead them right to her. Stupid! Stupid, stupid girl! She mentally berated herself. One of these days your luck is going to run out, Katya, and you’re going to find yourself taking a short step towards a long fall. She felt a finger poke her in the shoulder and saw Claus offering her the cup, which she took with a weak “thank you.” She had been right, the liquid was a boiled-grass tea and not a very good one at that, but the warm drink seemed to seep into her very bones and helped a bit with the chill. She passed the mug back to him with a genuinely grateful smile.

Claus lifted his newly returned mug, drained the remaining tea in a single pull, and then looked sadly into the empty cup as though surprised to find it empty. “So, ummm by any chance would you like to go inside and get a drink or a bite to eat? I’d like to get out of the cold.”

The sudden invitation nearly gave Yekaterina whiplash, and she desperately scrambled her thoughts to come up with some sort of acceptable response; it would not do to anger the man by rejecting his advances outright. “I-I’m sorry, Patrol Leader, but I’m already spoken for and I…” Where in all the Realms did that come from? She was certainly not engaged to anyone, and probably would not live long enough to be. Not that she was opposed to the idea in theory, and she actually thought that someday she might like to have a family. Or, she might have in a different life. A pang of sorrow caught in her chest as she thought about the impossibility of that now. Still… Sway above, another lie to keep track of.

“Wha- Oh! No, no, no!” The watchman’s eyes were wide and he waved his open palms towards her frantically. It was so over-the-top it was almost comical. “I’m married – happily so! – and my wife would skin me alive if she thought I was sneaking around behind her back.” He blinked, and then added for good measure, “to uh, say nothing of your opinions, on the matter, of course.” He scrubbed a hand through his greasy hair and sighed wearily. “I just… don’t want to be alone today, I suppose. And since I ran into you and we were both there, I figured you might want to talk about it. Or, at least, listen to me do so.”

It was a tempting offer; the prospect of actual human contact with a warm meal and fire to boot was very, very appealing. Plus, it would be a golden opportunity both to divert attention from herself and to learn more about the investigation. She made her decision. The funeral procession had long since passed as the two made their way inside, and even the dirge was hard to hear over the soft pitter-patter of the torrents of slow falling rain. Even so, it would be a long time before Yekaterina would be able to sleep without seeing the small child walking with his mother through the haze.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

Despite the old adage, any beer was not good beer, and Yekaterina grimaced over the swill in her tankard. It was drinkable, if only just. She did not know who this Pabst brewer was, but she was going to have strong words with the inkeep about labeling this foul brew as the inn’s blue-ribbon beer. Her table companion winced at her sympathetically as she voiced her complaints, but she noticed that he had not touched his own mug. Coward, she thought as she took another sip. Her braid swung back and forth gently over her shoulders as she shook her head dolefully. Nope, it was still terrible.

The pause in her lambasting the virtues of the fine establishment’s choice in beverages seemed to give Claus a moment to collect his thoughts, because he screwed up his face in concentration and then perked up brightly. “But what was I saying? Oh, yeah. So the captain is walking up and down the line, tearing us all a new one for some bullshit reason or another, right? Like maybe Pyotr forgot his whistle again or something.” Yekaterina nodded along as she listened to the man tell his story; he was an animated storyteller, gesturing wildly with his hands and making ridiculous impersonations with his voice and facial expressions. Perhaps in another life he had been a bard, or an actor. She also couldn’t help but notice that his language had steadily become more and more profane as the morning progressed, but she didn’t mind; it was just pleasant to have someone actually treat her like a normal human being instead of a dangerous stranger. “And so he’s really laying into us, when suddenly he just stops, turns, and stares at Iosef. Sway only knows where, but he found some indigo and had done an awful job dying his hair jet black and cut his beard exactly like the captain’s. And the thing was, Iosef even looked like the captain, if a few years younger. So the two just stood there, fuckin’ staring at one another, and the rest of us were holding our breath because we had no idea how this was going to turn out. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the captain just says, ‘looking sharp, cadet. Dismissed!’ and let us go!” Wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes, he laughed, “Yeah, those were good times… good times.”

After her own chortle passed, Katya probed, “What ever happened to him? Your friend Iosef, I mean?”

The smile turned sour on the watchman’s face before it slipped away entirely as he finally took his first swig of beer. “He died. In the first days of the war, lots of people panicked and there was a riot here in Ostford. Iosef was on duty when it started and some angry peasant afraid of being conscripted shanked him in gut with a carving knife.” He took another deep pull, clearly less bothered by the taste than by the memory. “A bad way to go; he hung on in the infirmary for a while but… you know how it was, the nurses and certainly the healers were all off helping the ‘real’ soldiers.” Bitterness and no small amount of anger crept into his voice. “Funny thing was, he didn’t even give a damn about the politics; he was in the guard for the pay. Wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose.” His eyes glazed over as he stared through the wall behind Katya, a thousand miles away. “Everywhere was the wrong place back then.”

Yekaterina did not have to fake sympathy for the man as she reached over and hesitantly rubbed his shoulder. “I’m sorry about your friend, Claus. I can’t even begin to count the number of people I had to watch die in front of me without being able to do a thing, and I was supposed to be a nurse.” There had been so, so very many deaths in those years, so many kids who had no earthly idea what it was they were fighting for. She remembered one boy, a lad who couldn’t have even needed to shave every day, whimpering quietly through the night after the doctors had amputated his gangrenous leg. She sat next to him, wiping the sweat from his brow all night and dosing him with poppy, whispering that everything would be OK. The very next day he died from septic shock.

Claus forced a grin and said, “Well, here’s to him, huh?” He raised his tankard in the air, and Yekaterina followed suit. “To Iosef, you glorious bastard, and to new friends. Nostrovia!”

Yekaterina dutifully echoed the toast, but her mind was elsewhere. Friends? That was… fast. Did normal people really just accept strangers into their lives so quickly? She watched Claus surreptitiously from the corner of her eye, weighing and measuring the man with her gaze. The watchman seemed like a good man, but even thinking about letting her guard down around someone made her skin crawl. Was it all an elaborate ploy set up by the Hunters? Katya wouldn’t put it past them to devise something so convoluted as a long game with a sleeper agent. Did they think she was so naïve? She rolled her shoulders, feeling the perpetually tender brand between them prickle and stretch as she did so, but it did little to help with the sensation of being watched.

“Hey, you!” Yekaterina jumped a foot in the air at the sharp voice behind her. As she turned to see who was speaking, she saw two figures in identical leather jerkins and black cloaks crossing the tavern floor, the crowd parting to avoid them like oil and water. The man and woman did not saunter; they walked with quick, efficient steps and carried themselves with an air of supreme confidence that everyone would jump to get out of their way. Although the two could not have possibly looked more different, the man being short and light of hair and eye and the woman possessing a dark complexion to match her deep brown eyes, they possessed determined expressions that could have been cast from the same mold. The Hunters had found her. As the two reached Yekaterina and Claus’ table, the woman looked her up and down once and then nodded firmly. “You’re that woman who was screaming like a banshee in the market. We’ve been looking for you; the Seeker wants to ask you some questions. Come with us.”

The sound of a chair slowly dragging across the floor drew Yekaterina’s attention towards her tablemate as Claus stood up and faced the Hunters with an obstinate set to his features. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.” The pair stared at him in utter disbelief – a feeling Katya could fully understand – but before they could say anything back, he continued. “The Watch is taking care of this, and I’ve vetted her; she’s clear.” The male Hunter opened his mouth, ready to put Claus in his place, but the watchman overrode him. “I said it is taken care of. You need to go. Now.”

The woman grabbed her partner’s arm and jerked him back as he took a step towards Claus. “Leave them. We’ll come back later when the Patrol Leader comes to his senses.” She shot Claus a look that promised retribution before turning the same gaze to Katya. For some reason the memory of Erika mentioning Astrid being under her tutelage floated to the forefront of Yekaterina’s mind. She tried to imagine Astrid making that face, but it was so far beyond her ken as to be impossible. The awkward girl with the mischievous grin from her memory could never look at someone with such cold hatred, could never stare with the promise of black deeds. Sorrow crashed over her like a wave as she realized that the girl from her memories did not exist anymore; however much Katya wished it wasn’t so, Astrid was a Hunter now, and if she wasn’t yet she would soon become a warped and hardened facsimile of the best friend Yekaterina had ever had.

The man jerked his arm free from the other Hunter’s grip, and spit on the floor at Claus’ feet. “Fucking mage lover…” and then the two of them turned on their heels and headed out the door. Yekaterina’s arm jerked up and caught Claus’ shoulder as he took a step after them, but thankfully the man stopped at her touch.

Claus was shaking with rage, his jaw clenched tight as he stared at the Hunter’s retreating backs. His hand was hovering over the empty loop at his hip, fingers twitching, and Yekaterina was eminently grateful that he must have left his cudgel wherever it was that he had stored his armor and helm last night. The only thing that could have made this situation worse would be for the slightly inebriated soldier to fly off the handle and assault a member of the Order. She pulled at Claus’ shoulder with the hand she had used to restrain him to turn him towards her. “Why did you stand up for me? They could ruin your career for this!” She didn’t have that heart to add that they might really hurt him for this. If the Hunters truly did suspect Claus of aiding a witch they would feel no remorse about making him suffer for it. Besides, the man worked with them; there was no point in stating the obvious.

The watchman stared at her with a dumbstruck expression. “Because you’re not a witch, Yekaterina. I saw you sleeping in the cold last night, and witch or not there was no way you could have killed that man, gotten clear across town, and had time to change your clothes.” Claus shook his head, his fury having subsided at least a degree. “Besides,” he added, “that’s what friends do; they stick up for one another.” Shrugging her arm off his shoulder, the soldier walked off towards the bar where the other patrons were finally beginning to return to their own business. “Here, let’s get another drink. This round’s on me.”

As she watched him make his way across the room, Yekaterina found herself thinking not for the first time, I’m surrounded by madmen and homicidal fanatics, and I don’t know which will be the death of me.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

SIDE STORY: The Price of Loyalty

The two burly guards half dragged, half carried Claus down the central aisle of the nave. As they made their awkward way down the row, Claus felt the figures of the Saints painted upon the plaster of the ceiling, blackened in spots by years of soot from the oil lamps on the columns, staring down on him in silent judgment. The deep shadows obscuring their eyes only made their opinions that much more inscrutable, but he was fairly certain they found all beneath them in the rows of pews wanting. It was hard to meet the measure of the divine.

At the front of the building, Claus saw the person he had been expecting to be taken to from the moment he had been so rudely torn from his dreams. The Seeker knelt on the stone steps of the chancel, her gaze turned upward towards the massive mosaic behind the altar in contemplative prayer. Even like that, however, she had an air of something about her that in another person he might have called tension, but she lacked the volatility to do the word justice. No, not tension, he decided. A readiness like a coiled viper, or a wolf prepared to spring, and much, much more deadly to boot. He and the other members of the Watch had met with the Seeker and her officers before when they first arrived in town, but this was to be an entirely different sort of meeting.

Without turning to face the group that had intruded in her prayer, the brown haired woman spoke. “Leave us. I want to have words alone with the Patrol Leader.”

The two men bowed dutifully, and simultaneously said, “By your order, Seeker. Sway keep you.” The woman did not return the blessing, and indeed seemed to have completely put the two from her mind; she needed no guards, and she knew it. As his captors released him, Claus leaned against the foremost pew for support, his tired muscles aching for sleep and the bruises left by the soldiers’ tender ministrations crying in protest as he waited for the Seeker to say something. She clearly wanted to speak with him, else why would she have had him taken, but as the silence stretched on, broken only by the sound of the flames in the lamps crackling softly on their sconces, he began to wonder what game she was playing at. Was it a power-trip, a tactic to put him off balance, or was she genuinely still in prayer? With the Hunters, one could never tell.

“Are you familiar with the scene?” The Seeker finally asked without turning away from it, her perfectly flat voice echoing softly in the stillness. Claus looked up and blinked wearily at the enormous image that took up the entire wall behind the altar. Worked in thousands of tiny porcelain tiles, the artwork was a fantastical rendering a battle in front of a city. Strange, twisted, infernal beasts done in reds and purples and black howled silent screams of terror as they fled from the walls where haloed figures pointed swords at their retreating backs. The tired watchman noted with some surprise that a few humans were running with the demons, though the artist had made them look particularly grotesque, more so even than the fiends. It was impossible to imagine what could drive men to willingly choose to fight one the side of demons, but he could understand their fear. He also could not help but notice that each of the auras around the faithful men and women depicted on the wall were single crescents of solid gold, one of which no doubt cost more than Claus made in a year. There was great power in the Church, and a veritable river of gold flowed from Her coffers. Erika continued after a brief pause, convinced that he would give no answer. “The victory at Knife’s Edge during the Demon Wars. The great battle that united our people and showed them where their salvation truly lay.”

Claus grunted noncommittally. He knew the story, of course; not a child grew up in Salvar without hearing how the Sway and their Church had driven the demons from the borders of their nation and sent them screaming back to Haida. It was one of the great moments in Salvic history, one which people to this day used as a rallying cry for their kingdom. What he didn’t know, however, and what worried him far more, was why the Seeker was dragging this out, making a point of giving him a history lesson in the middle of the night after having him beaten and pulled from his bed. The sensation of being watched by the icons behind and above him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but he dared not look away from the Seeker for even a moment. They were only pictures; the real danger was in front of him.

Erika kept talking, apparently unperturbed by his taciturn mood. “This… witch,” she enunciated the word slowly, as though tasting the syllable and savoring its edges. By the scornful grimace on her features, one might think she merely found it distasteful rather than horrifying that one could fall so far as to consort with fiends. “The one who murdered that man and assaulted the girl, is not why we’re here. Something far larger is at work nearby, something far more sinister.” She frowned, apparently losing herself in thought for a moment – or, at least, affecting to have done so – before she continued. “Still, perhaps the Sway have delivered her into our hands for righteous judgment, or maybe they are showing us the depths of depravity here.” She finally turned from the mosaic and studied Claus with eyes like shards of ice that gleamed in the flickering lamplight. “It is hard to say; these are dark times, and men have forgotten where their faith should lie.”

A shiver ran down Claus’ spine at her casually delivered, emotionless words; she was clearly not speaking in abstractions anymore, or referencing history. He would have to tread very, very carefully. Still, he held his peace; what could he say at this point that would change anything?

“Two members of my party came to me earlier today with a disturbing report, Patrol Leader. While they were pursuing a lead in the murder they were knowingly obstructed from completing their mission by a member of the Watch.” She canted her head slightly, as though seeing him from another perspective would reveal his guilt. Something told Claus that that was what she was searching for; there were no innocents in the Seeker’s eyes, only different degrees of guilt. “You’re not surprised. I thought not.” She sighed tiredly, and for the first time Claus noticed the slight purple tint beneath her eyes. A strange sympathy for the woman came over him; it could not be easy to carry the burden of hunting down the apostates and maleficars in their midst, and he was sure that it was profoundly taxing. Perhaps, he thought, that was the source of her cruelty, her dyed-in-the-wool certainty that evil was lurking in everyone. The thought was small comfort though; he knew what was coming next.

“You know why you are here?” Claus nodded numbly, his eyes never leaving hers. “And you will not fight me on this?” Another nod. Erika did not smile, or show any pleasure at the prospect of what was to come, only met his nod with her own as she stood in a single, fluid motion and grabbed one of the candles from its holder. “Then come with me. We have some questions for you about Yekaterina.”

Claus found his thoughts wandering to his wife, no doubt sleeping blissfully unaware in their home near the keep as he followed the Seeker into the basement of the church. What would she think, he wondered, when they told her the news? Would they even bother telling her? He remembered the day he had met her, a young woman with sun-kissed skin the color of caramel, quick eyes that shone like chips of obsidian. She had laughed at him when he tried to give her a flower and tell her how beautiful she was, and told him to try harder. He had done his best to do so for the past five years, but it seemed as though he hadn’t tried hard enough. Sway keep you in their arms, Elsa, and help you in your grief. With that last prayer, he stepped into the darkness after that lone, bobbing candle.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

Pt. I

Yekaterina strode through the forest on the edge of town, careful to avoid the tangling roots and underbrush eager to snare unsuspecting feet. Although the past few days had been cold, the rain had washed away much of the first snow that had until recently coated the land, and the day was surprisingly mild. She stopped to rest at the top of the hill, and looked out over the expanse of twisting branches towards the river in the distance, and felt a keen longing to return to the days in Loshad, before the war, before Istaraesh. Astrid had always had a look of longing on her face whenever she told Yekaterina stories of going hunting with her father, and the woman could understand why. There was a simplicity to the untamed regions of the world, dangerous though they might be; the wolf and bear did not make convoluted plots against one another, or rule over their domains with warped and cruel ideologies, they merely were. If that meant killing an elk, each other, or a human, so be it. Might made right here, but that was all. It was wrong to call these places savage; true brutality existed only in the realms of man. Out here in the wilderness she could almost forget that she was a witch, that there was a manhunt out for her, and that she had snuffed out the candle of a man’s life. The analogy was an apt one at that; in a split-second a piece of honed metal had cut short what easily could have been decades worth of days and nights, loves and losses in the stranger’s existence, to say nothing of the irreparable damage done to his loved ones and friends. Yekaterina grimaced and hefted her walking stick once more. She could almost forget, anyway.

As she approached her campsite, she heard the rustling of foliage and the frightened squeals of small game. It seemed that she was in luck, but her prey was not so fortunate. The rabbit thrashed fitfully in the snare she had set over the game trail, the noose having failed to do its work. Yekaterina threw down her walking stick, grabbed the animal, and in one quick, practiced motion snapped its neck. Woman of the cloth or no, she had learned to live off the land in her travels, and the first lesson of the wilderness was that mercy would leave you cold and starving in the black of the night. Sometimes a quick release was all you could offer without sacrificing yourself in something else’s place. It was a shame the creature had had to suffer in fear for so long, but she offered a quick prayer to the Sway for its soul and asked for its forgiveness. She did not know if the beasts of the world had had the essence of life breathed into them as humans and other advanced races did, but if nothing else the petition assuaged her guilty conscious.

She examined the hare in her hands, running her fingers over the fur, and was pleased to note that it had already developed a pleasantly thick winter coat. She was no practiced fur-trapper, and certainly would be able to do little with the skin herself, but perhaps she could trade it in town once she had dried it to someone who could. Unfortunately, the grizzly task of obtaining the coat came first. Katya had always hated that part; Astrid had taught her how to skin an animal, and to properly butcher it, but she found the task unnerving. It was one thing to eat a rabbit stew, it was entirely another to know what those chunks of savory meat had looked like as you peeled the pelt from its muscles. Every time she had she felt a strange revulsion at the realization that people were all too similar to the animals of the wilds. She would know, too; she had seen more than her fair share of ghastly wounds. Memories from the early days of the war came back as she dug in her pack for the hunting knife she kept there, and her hands set to their task while her mind was miles away…

----------

The field hospital was like nothing Yekaterina had ever seen before, a dizzying, chaotic whirl of men and women rushing from improvised ward to improvised ward, shouting orders and carrying supplies as they went. Riders arrived and left within minutes, jumping from horses only long enough to deliver messages and to give the grooms time to saddle a fresh mount. She had lived in the city for most of her life, and was used to the press of crowds and the hectic atmosphere of market days, but this was something else entirely. Her orders had been to report to the tents and find the chief medical officer on staff, but her instructions had not been any more specific than that, and now she was at a loss for what to do; she had not even been given a name. The entire trip to Archen she had been bright-eyed and eager, ready to solve the entire war with ill-defined “goodwill” and “effort.” Her traveling companions, young men and women off to the recruitment camps nearby, were similarly enthusiastic, boasting about being covered in glory and great battles. Several of them even bragged of the trophies they would bring home when the war was over. The atmosphere had been infectious. Now, though, as she looked around, the grim reality of the situation was beginning to set in and she could see how hopelessly naïve she had been.

She had passed several men sitting on hastily gathered benches in the first tent, the one everyone called “intake” cradling broken arms or nursing wounds in their sides as they waited to be seen. No small few were quietly shaking as they stared off into the distance, their eyes twitching violently with each crash and shout from deeper in the hospital. One man, a grizzled veteran by the look of him, was sobbing uncontrollably into his hands, though Yekaterina could see no wounds on his soot-stained body. Even with the flaps rolled up along the bottoms of the canvas walls, the stench of alcohol, blood and gore was so overwhelming as to make her eyes water. She wasn’t a stranger to malodorous places, cities by their very nature tending towards a certain level of squalor, but she was staggered by the concentration here and could not believe how utterly oblivious everyone else seemed to the smell. Even the stretcher-bearing horses tethered out front hardly seemed perturbed by it.

Something bumped forcefully into her shoulder as she looked around dumbstruck at the scene, staggering Katya and nearly knocking her into the tent pole. A man wearing a bloodstained apron cursed violently as he bent to gather the supplies he had dropped. From his kneeling position, he glared up at her fiercely. “If you’re going to stand in the way of everyone trying to save lives, at least try to do something useful!” the man snapped. He thrust the pile of bandages towards Yekaterina as he leapt to his feet, and growled, “come with me. Now!” The medic had a manic fervor in his eyes, and his gruff demeanor brooked no argument, so Yekaterina obediently followed on his heels as he trotted through the complex. They passed room after room of stretchers occupied by the wounded, some of them clearly worse for wear than others, until they reached a tent near the end of the structure. The doctor ran inside and pushed his way between several other people surrounding the soldier on the table. He shot her a look of utter consternation over his shoulder and practically screamed, “Well? Get over here and hold these bandages!”

Yekaterina did her best to staunch the bleeding with the gauze padding she had been given, but it was a losing battle; there was simply too much blood gushing forth from the gash in the man’s abdomen, and the soldier’s jerking and howling was only exacerbating the damage. His skin was pulled back from the tear, and beneath the crimson wash she could see his muscles rippling as he struggled. The doctor looked up from his work towards Katya. “Keep up the fucking pressure, nurse!” He turned from her and shouted across the room at one of the passing orderlies, “Can someone get me some sutures before this poor bastard bleeds out?!” The young man gave a crisp salute and sprinted through the chaos, somehow managing to avoid running into any of the other people going about their tasks with single-minded determination. Now was not the time to be watching the other staff members, however. She leaned in, pressed down, and tried to ignore the sensation of hot blood oozing over her fingers.

---

Hours later, Yekaterina was sitting outside the hospital, leaning against the flagstaff in exhaustion. The banner of the Army of the Holy Church fluttered weakly in the wind above her head, but she paid no mind to it; if the Sway had seen fit to not intervene in the pandemonium today, she had to believe that They would take no offense to her resting beneath Their sign. The breeze was blessedly cool against her brow and, equally wonderfully, kept her upwind from the wards. Light poured out from the tents as the flap was thrown back and the doctor she had worked with before strode outside. Katya stared at him wide-eyed, waiting for him to yell for her to get back to work, but the shout never came. Instead, he reached into the pack on his shoulder and took out a metal flask from which he drank from with an audible gulp. He gave a gasp at the rough liquid, looked down at her, and held the bottle out to her with a raised eyebrow. The medic shrugged as she shook her head. “Well, suit yourself. I’ll be in the camp if you need something to help you sleep tonight.” He took another deep pull from the flask and muttered under his breath, “I always do.” She kept quiet, certain that the man had not intended her to hear, and equally certain that he would not want any sympathetic words from her.

Yekaterina sighed in exhaustion and pressed palms into her bleary eyes. She did not know what she had expected, but this… this was certainly not it.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

Pt. II

Katya rested her weary bones on the large, moss covered rock in the middle of her campsite, listening to the crackles and pops of the logs on the campfire and enjoying the savory scents coming from the roasting haunch on the spit. It had been an unseasonably warm day for a Salvic autumn, and the midday sun had warmed the stone such that she could feel the gentle heat from it seeping through the fabric of her trousers, lulling her into a lethargic state. For the last while she had taken to staring at the ritual dagger, as though looking at it would force it to divulge its secrets. She turned the blade over in her hands, rolling it experimentally between her fingers as she watched the afternoon sunlight play off its cold metallic surface. It was strange, really; she had never been a fighter, had never wanted to hold a weapon. As a child she had been the mediator, the peacekeeper in her group of friends, always trying to talk her way out of a fight, or failing that giving in to prevent one. Even during the war she had never once drawn the sword she had been issued until the day she and the acolytes had been attacked as they fled Archen. The past few years though she had found that peaceful solutions were often few and far between in the real world, and the threat of violence, as abhorrent as she found it, could prevent an evil better.

The light caught the edge of the dagger, and Yekaterina realized something: She had never sharpened the thing, and yet it never seemed to lose its edge. Not that she had been using it often, or in tasks better suited to her hunting knife or a hatchet – she knew better than that – but she had cut herself many a time on that razor, and had killed a man with it as well. She saw a fist sized stone on the ground near her perch, and curiosity prompted her to pick it up. Katya hefted the rock, feeling the rough edges of its uneven surface as she pondered the nature of the weapon in her other hand. The impulse seized her to see her question through to its logical end, and she began scraping the dagger’s point against the stone. A simple bronze tool would be quickly blunted by that. After a time, she set the rock down carefully next to her leg and took her free hand and gently ran her finger over the edge. Immediately she gave a soft cry and stuffed her finger into her mouth, tasting the coppery tang of blood. The blade was still improbably sharp. She glared at the dagger, and then felt childish for doing so; it was not the weapon’s fault that she had been foolish enough to cut herself on it. Or was it? She was not so certain the thing did not have a certain mind of its own, and she would not put it beyond Istaraesh to subtly compel her to self-injury.

Still, as she suckled on the injured fingertip, she itched to get the weapon away from her; the thing was clearly not the work of men, and she had seen – and felt – first hand the evil works it was capable of. What was to be done though? What could she do? She had never questioned whether or not she needed to keep the thing; it had been there when she woke up with Istaraesh riding in the back of her mind, and at the time it had seemed expedient to keep some sort of weapon with her. But now, with everything that had happened since? The thought stuck in her mind as Yekaterina stared pensively at the weapon, refusing to let go. Perhaps she could finally be rid of it. Katya looked around her, and realized that this might be the best chance she had. There was little chance of a stranger coming across the dark blade, and nothing to tie it back to her if she were to be rid of it here and now. The idle musing solidified into determination. She gripped the wire-wrapped hilt firmly, pulled her arm back, and threw the dagger as far from herself as she could into the surrounding trees. She listened for the sound of it clattering to the ground or striking a tree trunk, but heard nothing. It was done. Even if she regretted her decision, at this point it could take hours of searching to find the thing in the underbrush, if she could even find it at all. As she turned her attention from the filthy thing, Yekaterina went back to her study. She turned the blade over in her hands, rolling it experimentally between her fingers as she watched the afternoon sunlight play off its cold metallic surface. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized what had happened, and she stared at the dagger with distress as keen as its edge.

“You shouldn’t be so quick to throw away such a powerful tool, girl-child.”

Yekaterina’s head jerked up from the dagger, and she saw the speaker standing in front of her. The woman was wreathed in an aura of shifting, iridescent colors that looked like nothing so much as spilt lamp oil catching the sun, which blended her features beyond the point of recognition. Katya could not have even said what race she belonged to as her skin flitted from the rich, dark hues of the Alerites to the greens and browns of orcs and to every possible – and some quite impossible – description between. Reality itself seemed to bend and warp in the space around her as the trees became lithe dancers clothed in gowns of bark, waving banners of autumnal reds and oranges behind the figure. Even the light itself seemed to meld itself around her head to create a glowing crown above her brow. With so little certain about the ephemeral being, there was at least one thing about which Yekaterina had no doubt: There was magic at work here, powerful and older even than Istaraesh could remember. The sinuous brand between her shoulders seemed to pulse in time with the changes around the apparition, and Yekaterina was keenly aware of the being riding in the back of her mind. The overwhelming sensation floating thick in their symbiotic bond was one of terrified awe.

Yekaterina stared at the woman in wide-eyed terror. She had not been there moments before, and no one could move so silently through the forest that they could have come this close without her noticing at least something. Her free hand unconsciously clenched into a peasant’s ward against evil as she fervently prayed in her mind. Sway and saints above ward me from evil, shelter me in Your benevolent hands and guide me to safety. The figure cocked its head, and beneath the aura Katya thought she saw a mocking smile on its features. “Your… Sway… are young gods, girl-child, new to existence and small in their scope.” She said the name slowly, as though unfamiliar with it. “There are more things under the sun than you could ever dream of, and countless more besides.” Yekaterina flinched. Could this woman – spirit, being, whatever she was! – read minds? Or was Katya merely so predictable? The woman continued speaking, ignoring Yekaterina’s panic. “Iron,” she said scornfully, gesturing towards the hunting knife Katya had left near the rabbit’s skin drying on the rack, “is also new. New, brittle, and weak.” Yekaterina felt her mouth go dry as she watched the knife, carefully maintained to prevent damage, spot with rust before her very eyes and then snap at the heel with a soft ping only just audible over the crackling of the fire. Her eyes twitched back to the woman as she whispered in a voice like the wind rustling leaves, “you would be better served trusting in the Old ways.”

Still unable to find her voice, Yekaterina could only offer a mewling reply that she hoped the creature took as assent. The woman did not seem to mind though, but stared directly into her eyes as she kept speaking. “We’ve seen you, girl-child, and We’ve heard your prayers. We even watched your hunt today.” A glowing hand pointed towards the roasting meat and drying skin. “It is a shame when a beast is made to suffer before it meets its end, but sometimes that is the way of the world. Still, We were surprised; your kind are normally quite adept with the noose.” The aura around the figure shifted, becoming darker and heavier, like the roiling clouds of a coming storm. “In fact, there are other Hunters at work here, and we are quite sure that they are familiar with the rope.” She paused, as though considering. “Unfortunately, they do not seem to care so much about the suffering of their prey.”

Suddenly, the aura snapped back to its rainbow hues, and the woman began to chuckle. Her laughter was like the chiming of an unearthly bell, ringing loud and then echoing until it faded to the very edge of hearing. “You’ll see. You’ll see, and then you’ll come crawling back to me on your knees.” She raised a hand, palm towards her phantasmal visage, and examined her nails in an all too human action made all the more eerie by its mundanity. “I’ll wait. We are always waiting.” And then, quite suddenly, she was gone. Yekaterina jerked her head to and fro, searching her surroundings for any hint of passage. She found only the familiar trees and brush around her, the only sound the crackling of the flames licking the logs in the pit. It was as though the woman had never been there. There was a pause, only lasting a few heartbeats, and then she heard the sound she associated with Istaraesh, the noise of hundreds of voices speaking at once, laughing manically in the back of her mind. “It’s here.”

Yekaterina fled from the forest in abject terror, leaving the fire untended and the pelt on the rack for scavengers. She ran as hard as she could, tripping on exposed roots and snagging her hair on low-hanging branches. It did not matter though; she would not stop until she was back in town, away from the thing that made Istaraesh wail.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

Side Story: The Price of Loyalty, Part II

The Patrol Leader’s sightless eyes were clouded over with a misty film as he convulsed in the restraints that bound him tightly to the table in the center of the pristinely maintained cell. An Empowered Priest by the name of Vlad, a gaunt-faced, balding man with pinched features that always made him seem as though he were pursing his mouth in distaste, stood at the watchman’s head, his own eyes a mirror of his subject’s. His thin, pale, sinewy arms protruded from the sleeves of his poorly tailored robe as he worked, looking discomfortingly childlike in contrast to the rest of his aged appearance. The mage’s fingers twitched as though pulling the threads on a loom as he held his hands out before him over the soldier, and with each subtle motion the prisoner jerked and spasmed. Erika suppressed her revulsion at the sight as she watched impassively from the other end of the table; she hated the man – loathed him to the core – and everything about him. Even his title, “Empowered Priest,” made her want to close the distance and strangle him with her bare hands. The doctrines of the Church were clear; magic was an abominable blight upon the world, and those who willingly practiced the so-called “gift” were as bad or worse than any other heretic in her eyes. The fact that he paid lip service to the rest of the faith and acted as a member of the clergy only made his infraction that much more glaring and obscene. A properly leashed mage did have its uses, not least of all in tracking others who would flaunt their profane talents, but even so the very idea of another person rooting through her mind set her teeth on edge. Plus, for all this effort she was still uncertain that the man could even do that much at this point.

Vlad had arrived not long before Erika had given the order to procure the watchman, having foundered two horses in order to reach Ostford before the day was out. The message she had sent by currier pigeon had urged him to come with all haste, but even so by now he was too late to track the witch – Yekaterina, she was sure of it now, even if she had yet to find definitive proof – by the taint left behind by her depraved magic. Irritation welled up under her calm exterior and threatened to boil over before she quashed it forcefully; if the fool had obeyed her orders in the first place he would have come into this godless, backwater place with her party she would not have had to put this man to the question in the first place. Insubordinate and borderline-heretical though his underling's actions were, the Captain of the Watch had been less than eager to hand over one of his rising stars, if the term could be used non-ironically in a town like this. Erika herself could commiserate with him about the loss of a promising candidate; more than one of her acolytes had had to be put down after failing to carry out orders that were critical to the success of her mission.

Speaking of… Erika turned her thoughts away from the interrogation, knowing there was little need for her direct involvement until the mage finished his… work, and let them wander to her most recent charge. She had not wanted to leave the girl alone at this juncture – she was still far, far too inexperienced to be left to her own devices – but the need to reach Ostford quickly had necessitated a temporary parting, even if the circumstances for it were far from ideal. Erika frowned in consternation. The plump cleric with the beady eyes and grating habit of constantly dry-washing his hands while speaking had ensured her that he would keep an eye on Astrid, but she had grave doubts that the portly man would even speak up against the Watch there, let alone against the nobility if they decided to seek revenge. She had done her best to ensure that the single greatest threat to Astrid was taken care of quickly and with no way to link the incident back to her, but even so there were more than enough people with a grudge against the Church to take it out on a lone acolyte. Something like a smile flitted across her face as she remembered the boy’s pathetic pleading at the end. He was brave and fought as well as could be expected, she gave him that much, but arrogant enough for ten and a blasphemer to boot. She shook her head, a chuckled softly. What kind of fool tried to bribe the Order? She knew the answer though, as surely as she knew the sun rose in the East: a dead one. The world was better off rid of him.

A soft, wheezing gasp drew her attention back to the present, and Erika looked up just in time to see Vlad blinking away the last of the disorienting, magical haze from his mind. Perhaps some would find the sudden shift in his eyes from milky white to their natural hazel disconcerting, but the Seeker had seen far, far too many darker things in her time to be unnerved by what amounted to simple parlor tricks. The Patrol Leader lay unconscious in his bonds, his breath shallow and his visage drained; the magic used to delve into the mind was not a gentle one to its recipients, and only time would tell if there was even anything left of the once promising soldier. Even if he survived he would be only a hollow husk of the man he had been before. Erika tsked in vexation. It really was a waste; the man could have been reeducated easily enough, and gone on to live a righteous life. She shook her head sadly. She took no joy in breaking people, only saw the necessity of it and had the will to see it through. No,[i] she amended, [i]that was not entirely true. Looking up at the mage who was finally coming to his senses, she decided that there were indeed some people who she would thoroughly enjoy breaking.

“Well?” She asked, wasting no time or niceties on the man; she expected efficiency from those under her command, and if she was harsher with the Church’s pet wizards, that was just to be expected. They were tools, and dangerous ones at that.

Vlad shook his head as he raised a hand to rub his temple. His sleeve fell to his elbow as he did so, revealing even more of that oddly disproportionate limb. “I’m sorry Seeker, but the man did not seem to believe that this Yekaterina woman was the witch. In fact, he was wholly convinced that she wasn’t.” His arm fell back to his side, and thankfully the robe slid back down to cover the appendage once more. “He seemed to be quite taken with her; seems she reminded him of his sister.”

Erika glowered at him, willing his eyes to rot in his skull. It had taken half an hour for him to find that? She seriously considered following through on her earlier whim to choke the life from the man.

“But,” the mage continued with a dramatic pause, clearly enjoying drawing out the suspense, “I did find something worthwhile in there.”

Erika deigned to let the silence drag on for a moment, giving the man his desperately desired moment of power. But, she was busy and wanted that information an hour ago. “And? Spit it out; what did you learn that can actually help us?” Her patience was wearing very, very thin with him.

Vlad sulked, a hurt expression on his face. Good. You had your fun, now get to the point! “There were traces of magic laced through his thoughts. A subtle thing, really quite well done if I do say so myself. The latticework was almost primitive in its execution, but it wasn’t shoved in like an initiate…” At her baleful glare, the man paused, and collected his thoughts. “Right. The point was, someone bewitched him, played with his emotions. Of that I’m certain, and I know the weave now. If you bring this Yekaterina woman to me, I’ll be able to tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt if she was the one.”

Erika said nothing as she grinned wolfishly at the man. He shuddered beneath her gaze, but for once she was not upset with him at all. In fact, this was the best news she had heard all week. Nothing made her happier than watching an apostate burn.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

Atop the mountains of northern Salvar, a gale was forming, carrying the sharp fangs of winter in its maw. The wind rode down from the perpetually frozen mountain peaks, coursing over rivers and streams and dodging the myriad trees in the forest the people called Burrwood where a wolf raised its nose to the scents it carried and let out a mournful howl. Serfs toiling in the field of a nearby holding heard the howl and felt the nip in the air, and muttered prayers against the coming storms. The wind carried on, unhindered by their petitions, until finally it slipped through the streets of Ostford and jerked the cloak from between Yekaterina’s fingers, causing the thing to flutter behind her like a banner. She shuddered as she felt the breeze steal the warmth from her like a thief in the night, and she flailed her arm behind her, desperate to reclaim some protection from the chill. As she pulled her newly reclaimed garment close, she looked up at the steely grey sky where thick clouds had obscured the sun. The unseasonably warm weather of the past few days was a distant, fond memory now; winter was coming to Salvar, and it was coming with a vengeance.

Her trip to the forest had been something of a revelation, and the promise of the coming snows only cemented her resolve; staying in one place was asking for danger, especially here where the Hunters were taking an active interest in the mystical goings-on in the woods. Yekaterina had decided that, once again, it was time to move on, this time towards the slightly warmer climes in the south. Perhaps she would be able to lose herself in a larger city like Knife’s Edge, or she might even be able to cross the border into Alerar. No few missionaries from the Church had made their way to the land of the dark elves in largely unsuccessful efforts to convert them to the worship of the Sway, and if the Alerites were less than enthusiastic about magic, at least they were not actively hunting down practitioners like the Church. However, even with her mind set on its course she did not want to leave without saying goodbye to the affable Patrol Leader. It had been years since she had another person in her life that she thought of as a friend. Maybe someday in the future she would be able to return to Ostford and regale the man with stories of her travels. That was something friends did, right? As it was, she clutched the bundle held in her free hand tightly against her chest, and hoped the man appreciated the gift. One of the vendors in the street had been selling small brass cloak clasps, and one in the shape of a hawk with wings outstretched in flight had caught her eye and reminded her of the man.

As Yekaterina rounded the corner into the plaza where she had first run into the Seeker, eager to see if she could find the Patrol Leader near the barracks, she let out of soft wail of despair before she could choke it back. Claus’ body hung limply from the neck on the quickly thrown up scaffolding in the middle of the square, and a crudely drawn sign around his neck proclaimed, “HERETIC” in bold, black letters. His face was bloated, purple, and twisted into a horrifying rictus, and the hastily assembled platform beneath his boots was scuffed and streaked with mud. All of the signs pointed towards suffocation as the final cause of death; the hangman hadn’t even bothered to ensure that his neck broke in the fall. The rest of his body was in no better shape either. His hands were bound behind his back, but even so she thought she could make out places where the tiny bones in his fingers had been fractured, and his feet looked to be twisted at impossible angles. Perhaps they had broken them at the last minute to prevent him from finding a purchase, however unlikely and short-lived that effort might have been. Claus had suffered, of that much she was sure, and continued to suffer this protracted humiliation. The corpse had been left to rot in the open air, perhaps as a gruesome, superstitious totem meant to counteract diabolism, but certainly as a reminder of the price of crossing the Church.

A lone soldier stood in front of the gallows, ostensibly guarding the body as he leaned on the haft of his halberd, though his dour mood seemed more the product of boredom than any real effort to dissuade the peasants from vigilantism. He had a folded kerchief tied around his nose and mouth, leaving only his eyes visible as he glared at the townsfolk who paused in their daily chores to make warding gestures or curse at the Patrol Leader’s remains. He was heavily bundled against the cold with a thick, fur mantle resting on his shoulders and a cloak held tight to cut the frigid draft as it whipped through the streets of Ostford, and between the kerchief obscuring his face and the hood drawn up to protect his ears, he looked the part of a stern sentinel or like a mythical beast out of the stories set to guard treasure. Sadly, if the mutters and gestures of the townsfolk were anything to go by, it seemed that the treasure was only precious to her.

Clutching the brass hawk so hard that the sharp edges of its wings dug into her palms, Yekaterina approached the man. She forced herself to steady her voice and blinked back tears as she asked, “What happened? I left town for only a day or two, but last I heard they were hunting a witch, not heretics. What did this man do?”

The soldier snorted derisively. “I don’t give a shit about this traitor; I’m just here to make sure the townsfolk don’t rip his corpse to shreds. Not that the fucker wouldn’t deserve it.” He lifted his bandana, snrked loudly and spat at the ground beneath the gently swaying corpse. “You sholda seen them miss, a right mob ready to go up like a haystack in a drought, and I wouldn’t have blamed them; no one takes to a mage lover at the best of times, and with people dying in the street they were ready to do the executioners job for him, and maybe take us with ‘im. Still, the Seeker insisted we do this one by the book, and at least this way there’s less mess for us to clean up when it’s all said and done, so I suppose there’s that.” He glowered at the gently swaying carcass, his eyes growing steely and cruel. “Hunters found traces of magic all over him. Seems like the bitch who murdered Vasili was compelling him. Hell, for all we know she made him kill Vasili; why else would she use a knife instead of magic? We were all scattered around the night, and wasn’t no way we could keep an eye on everyone.” He scrunched his eyes over the kerchief, and Yekaterina was certain he was grimacing under the cover. “Wasn’t like we thought we had to. At least we got ours in the end; Hunters let us have ‘im after whatever that priest did t’ make ‘im spill his guts.” The guardsman seemed to realize that she was the first person to approach him about the supposed heretic and gave her an intense stare. “What’s it to you anyway? You love him or something?” Scorn was thick on the man’s voice, and he cast a disparaging glare her way.

“No, I- he was my friend.” She answered in a quiet, broken voice, her eyes never leaving the body swinging gently with each gust of the wind. The low whistling it made as it passed between the ill-fitted boards made it sound as though the very world was crying at his loss. At least, that was what she told herself to take the sting away. Sway keep you and hold you, Claus, and carry you to your just reward. You were a good man, and didn’t deserve to get mixed up with me. Yekaterina’s thoughts turned to the strange apparition in the woods, and she remembered her words. “You would be better served trusting in the Old ways.” Time and again she had seen evidence that the Sway had turned Their backs on her; from her years of lonesome wandering, to being forced to abandon Mother Aletta and Elisabet, to being hunted by the Seeker, and now this. Everything pointed to Them cursing her. Katya could not blame Them if they did; she had left Them first when she broke her oaths as a cleric and became a blasphemer of the highest order. She did not know the names of the Old gods, their rites or their goals, but she offered another prayer up to them, or any being listening, echoing her request that Claus be safe in eternity. He deserved better than this.

As she crossed back through the throng of people hunkered down against the cold, Yekaterina dropped the twisted, bloodied remnants of the pin into a barrel of refuse beside one of the buildings. The guardsman watched her retreat attentively over the hem of his bandana, his brows drawn down in thought. Yekaterina knew that he would mention her prolonged interest in Claus it to the Hunters, but she could not find it in herself to be afraid just then; she felt hollow, as though cored by a honed razor until nothing was left but a cold fury. She would kill them. She would kill them all if it was the last thing she did before she was cast down to Haida. Yekaterina would see the Watch, the Church, even Salvar itself torn down brick by brick until nothing was left but a smoldering ruin. Most of all, however, she made an oath that she would see the Order of the All Seeing Eye burn for this. The woman in the forest’s prophetic words rang in her ears as she made her way back to the Clarion Call hopefully for the last time: “You’ll see, and then you’ll come crawling back to me on your knees.” Swa—Gods above help her, but she would; to see her enemies torn asunder, she would crawl until she bled.

[Yekaterina Aleratt]

If the day had been far from warm, the setting sun and falling darkness had rendered the air brittle with cold, and the wind became a razor that cut through any amount of clothing. The stars themselves seemed to be hiding under the now black cloud cover, blanketing themselves securely against the frigidity. The only light from the sky was a wan patch high overhead that marked the silvery crescent of the moon, barely piercing the roiling veil at all. Even the lamp lighters had not come out tonight, and with windows shuttered and covered against the chill the streets were nearly pitch black. As she crept slowly through Ostford under the cover of darkness, Yekaterina was sure that her fingers would freeze fast and shatter under the hiemal wind, but she could not stop yet. Katya had to finish this one last task, and then she could flee this cursed place once and for all. Istaraesh was gibbering madly at the back of her mind, whispering words that she could not understand. She knew the thing was trying to warn her about something – she could tell that much from its “tone,” – but there was nothing to be done about it. She would do this, terrified or not.

Her blistered palms ached beneath the leather of her gloves, and her shoulders and back protested as she crouched behind an abandoned cart on the edge of the square. She paid them no mind, letting the pain pulse dimly at the edge of her awareness. It felt as though it had been a long time since she had worked with a shovel, and even back then she had never had to dig a hole deep enough to take a man to the Earth’s final embrace. The clouds from her breath were barely visible even to her in the inky darkness, but she still held her hand in front of her mouth to catch the mist before it rose into the air. It would not do for her to have come this far only to be caught unawares because the unfortunate patrolman tasked with watching the streets tonight had seen the puffs of fog and came to investigate. Peering through the shadows she could make out the outline of the gallows and saw the gently swinging mass hanging from the arm. The creak of the rope against the wood was loud in the stillness of the evening, and the sound made her shiver more than the wind ever could. It was an ominous noise, one she hoped was not a foreshadowing of her own fate.

Yekaterina mustered her courage and began her awkward, hunched run through the square. Unfortunately, right as she was halfway between the cart and the gallows, she saw a light approaching down one of the side streets that fed into the plaza. She dropped prone to the ground, her pulse racing in her ears as she watched the patrolman make his way in front of the Church. She had no time to crawl over and put the scaffolding between the two of them, she could only hope that he would be too eager to keep moving to truly examine the square as he was supposed to. He raised his torch high and called out in a voice that rang through the silence, “Midnight, and all’s well. Sway and Saints keep it so.” After a brief pause, the soldier pulled the torch back down, keeping it near enough that he could benefit from the warmth of its blaze, but also thankfully light-blinding him to the rest of the area. She heard him muttering under his breath, and could just barely make out, “’All’s well,’ yeah fuckin’ right; It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.” Yekaterina had to fight to stifle a mad giggle at the absurdity of it; the watchman had no idea how cold her chest really was, pressed against the long-chilled cobblestones as it was. She watched him leave down the road opposite of the one he came from, and waited for a count of one-hundred before climbing back up to her crouch. It was time; there would not likely be another guard for some time on a night like this, but even so, she would have to move quickly.

She ascended the makeshift stairs as carefully as she could, wincing at each slight creak as she put her weight on them. Hopefully anyone who heard the sound would assume it was just the wind shifting the quickly thrown together structure and not someone climbing up it. If they did… Well, it was better not to think about that. She drew her bronze dagger, the only blade she had left after the apparition in the forest had broken her camp knife. It seemed appropriate, in a way; the thing had indirectly killed Claus through her stupidity, and now it was helping her to recover him from this indignity. Still, she could not wait to get the thing out of her hands again, and so quickly set to the task of cutting the heavy, coarse rope that was tethered to the main beam. As the final strands in the taut rope severed with a soft twang in the frigid stillness of the night, Yekaterina held on tight and carefully lowered Claus’ body to the gallows platform as carefully as she could. The thump of him hitting the raised floor would be louder than a drum in the quiet, and she might as well ring a gong and shout about her plans if that happened. She clambered over to Claus and cradled his cold, stiff body against her. She tenderly stroked his hair, thankful that at least the cold had slowed the purification of his remains so that she could have this moment. Yekaterina could not waste time mourning for him now though; she needed to get the body out of Ostford before the patrols came back and noticed it was missing, and that would be a challenge in itself. She could weep over his grave once he was safely buried.

A loud laugh broke her out of her reverie and sent her into a near panic as she looked through the darkness to find the source. “I had hoped you would come back, Yekaterina, and I’m glad I didn’t make my men wait outside in the cold for nothing.” The dark skinned Hunter who had found her at the tavern was suddenly there at the foot of the stairs, though how she had managed to sneak up without Katya noticing was as mystifying as it was terrifying. “You see, they’re very tired, and very, very unhappy with being out here on a night like this. So unhappy, in fact, that they want to make a little sport of this to take off the edge.” Yekaterina watched in abject terror as several other figures she could only just make out stood up at the edges of the square, and she heard the low, rumbling growls of hounds at the ready. Her eyes jerked back to the woman standing near the edge of the gallows with a sadistic smile plastered on her face, her teeth gleaming like white fangs in the darkness. “Run, little witch. We want to Hunt.”

What else could she do? She ran.

----------

Yekaterina panted and wheezed as she sprinted as fast as she could, small whimpers slipping from between her lips and she ducked and dodged her way through the forest. The Hunter had not lied; she truly wanted to make a hunt out of the Hunt, and so she had given Katya a head start. It mattered little though, as the dogs already no doubt had her scent, and she was no athlete to outrun them. There was only one chance left for her, slim though it was. If she was right, there was yet hope that she might make it through the night unharmed. If she was wrong… the Hunter had shouted after her that she was going to let the warhounds tear her to pieces if they caught her, and Yekaterina had no doubt the mammoth beasts she had seen in the square would be more than capable of doing so. She yelped in pain as a low branch tangled in her hair and tore a chunk from her scalp, but she did not stop. She could not stop; to stop was to die.

Come on, come on! Wait… there! Yekaterina threw herself through the last layer of branches and brush and fell on her knees into the clearing where she had made her camp the other day. The large boulder half out of the ground was there, looking like nothing so much as a diabolical sacrificial altar against the backdrop of the gnarled, leafless trees. She could still see the half-charred logs and blackened scorch marks on the ground from the remains of her campfire, the stone circle still oddly intact compared to the disorder in the rest of her abandoned campsite. She heard the baying of the hounds behind her, and the rustling of underbrush as the fan of Hunters pressed onward, hot on her trail. Katya attempted to rise to her feet, but once she had fallen there was no getting back up; she was simply too exhausted to carry on. In much the same way she did with Istaraesh, Yekaterina reached deep into her thoughts and pictured the woman from the clearing as she shouted into the void, Help me, please! I beg you!

“I had not assumed you would take my comment quite so literally, girl-child, but We do not mind.” A pool of shadows coalesced on the grass, seeming to pull the darkness from the rest of the clearing until it twisted and grew into the semblance of a person. The shade stretching up from that inky puddle was the figure of a woman cast in perfect blackness that made the night appear bright in contrast. Her very presence seemed to devour the light that came near it, and yet perhaps because of that profound depth, or through some arcane means, Yekaterina could make out fine details in her appearance. She was grinning at Katya with the expression of a cat that had found its way into the creamery.

A loud crash behind Yekaterina announced the arrival of the Hunters. She rolled onto her back and scooted as close to the figure as she could get, hoping that her assumption would be proven correct. The first person into the clearing after Katya was the woman who had spoken to her at the gallows, and she still had that predatory cast to her features as she stormed through the foliage, crossbow in hand. The charcoal skinned Lieutenant’s eyes widened in shock for a fraction of a second as they lit on the midnight-clad woman, but instantly reverted to a frosty resolve. She hefted her already cocked crossbow, aimed, and fired at the shifting mass of blackness far faster than Yekaterina would have thought possible, before she could even think that she might be the target. Her heart leapt in her chest as she feared that her one hope of escaping from the pack would be cut down, but she needn’t have worried. The bolt seemed to slow in midair, finally stopping mere inches from the woman’s hand. She plucked it from the air, her black fingers making the shot appear as though it were broken into several pieces. The shade turned it between her fingers as she glared at the Lieutenant. “Not today, Hunter; this one is mine.” She clenched her fist, and the quarrel snapped as though it were no more than a single straw of hay and fell into the churning shadows at her feet. “Goodbye, Lieutenant. Better luck next time.”

Yekaterina heard the sound of ravens cawing and flapping their wings, as though a host of them had materialized from thin air in the clearing. The brand in her back flared to life, but for once the feeling was a welcome one. Edged shadows flickered across her vision like birds flitting between the sun, and with each moment the darkness covered more and more of her sight. She saw the rest of the Hunters and the slavering dogs rush into the clearing behind the Lieutenant, swords, spears and crossbows at the ready, but they seemed to be unable to see her standing right in front of them. Perhaps they truly could not; the woman had done greater things with her magic than hiding in plain sight. In the span of several heartbeats Yekaterina’s vision had faded to tiny pinpricks of light shining through the swirling blackness, and the sound of ravens became overwhelmingly loud. She felt a strange tug from inside her chest, as though someone had tied a lariat around her heart and was yanking on the rope. Despite being unable to see, she was suddenly quite certain that she was moving far, far away from the clearing. Her awareness of reality slipped further and further away, and the sound of the birds faded until she found herself enshrouded in complete, silent darkness, floating alone in a space between worlds. She existed in that place that was nowhere, and let her mind relax for what felt like the first time in an eternity. The void suited her just fine.

To be continued in “Born on a Black Day, Born Under a Bad Sign”

[Otto]

Plot: 22/30


Storytelling: 7/10
The thread has a lot of merit when it comes to story: everything you include has relevance, you play the long game by setting up your characters' continued story arc, while still resolving conflicts in the thread itself so as to progress the plot/keep things interesting, and you built up a genuine and endearing rapport between Katarina and Claus without resorting to the obvious romance angle - something which, I think, worked very much in its favour. The thread could just have used a bit more backstory or explanation regarding Yekaterina's demonic affiliate, plus her history with Astrid.


Setting: 6/10
Possibly your weakest element. Though what you did describe was done well, the thread doesn't necessarily feel like it was set specifically in Salvar - were it not for the presence of the church, it could almost have taken place in mid-winter Corone. You could remedy this by describing the heavy furs people probably wore, the ever-present smell of woodfires to keep out the cold, ice and snow clinging to people's hair, traders' sleds arriving by dog team from the north, and so on.


Pacing: 9/10
Fantastic work. You always had something progressing, building up or paying off, and I found myself flying through the fairly lengthy thread with ease. This was not a bad thing, as it didn't feel rushed, either. This was due in part to interjecting the different side stories to break things up a little, which kept it fresh, and your willingness to follow the story through the slower parts as well as the more hectic ones.


Character: 21/30


Communication: 7/10
Nice and distinctive for each character, without taking it to extremes - except, perhaps, in the case of the guard assigned to the gallows. The monologue there made him a bit of a caricature - a bit too obvious. Simple callousness or indifference may have been the way to go instead. Or perhaps the guard still considers the patrol leader as a brother in arms, and no amount of church propaganda can wash away that concept? You mentioned to me that you weren't entirely sure about this part either, so all I can suggest is that, rather than try and make one particular approach work, change tactics and try another if it seems like you can't get it right.


Action: 7/10
You used action to describe the people well - to hint at their moods, their personalities, to intricately illustrate a scene as it played out. When it comes to working in the moment, as it occurs, you excel in this area. It's what makes the thread so easy to read, as the perpetual activity (however small) is always adding something and prevents the story from stagnating.

I will make some suggestions, though, for a couple of sections. First is Kat's journey to find shelter after leaving the village at the start - in terms of activity and content, it didn't quite match the length of time it apparently took her to discover another settlement. A longer, more treacherously monotonous trek through the landscape, marked only by the disappearing feeling in her extremities and strength in her muscles, would have encaptured that desperate crawl more successfully. And again, the chase after Kat killed her attacker had too little page-space to provide much of an impact, or convey something of the thrill of danger and terror she must have felt with the watch on her heels.


Persona: 7/10
As mentioned, character's personas were conveyed wonderfully, with perhaps the exception of the gallows guard (and perhaps the man who assaults Kat after she heals the girl, for similar reasons). What stood out to me was an instance towards the end, where rather than arrest Kat on the spot, the hunter tells her to run:

“You see, they’re very tired, and very, very unhappy with being out here on a night like this. So unhappy, in fact, that they want to make a little sport of this to take off the edge.” Yekaterina watched in abject terror as several other figures she could only just make out stood up at the edges of the square, and she heard the low, rumbling growls of hounds at the ready. Her eyes jerked back to the woman standing near the edge of the gallows with a sadistic smile plastered on her face, her teeth gleaming like white fangs in the darkness. “Run, little witch. We want to Hunt.”


Prose: 23/30


Mechanics: 9/10
I've rarely seen a thread so free of grammatical error, and your sentence structure lends itself to a wonderful sense of flow. There were no recurring mistakes, just what appeared to be the occasional typo, or some muddled wording - things which seemed to result from simple oversight rather than any flaw in your understanding of written mechanics. Thus, all I can suggest here is to proofread, proofread, proofread.


Clarity: 7/10
Fine clarity, apart from the aforementioned awkward sentence here and there. Your wording was otherwise clear and plain to understand, although some of Kat's impetuses might have been explained a little better when the history behind them was exposited (plus her history with Istaraesh/Astrid).


Technique: 7/10
Forgive me for being a little vague in this section, as it's not my forte. I can say that you flavoured your descriptions with metaphor and simile to great effect, and that helped with the imagery. Also, it was a good move to break the story up and change perspectives here and there, so as to provide a fresh angle. Lastly, there is a definite sense of doom which underlies Kat and Claus' budding friendship - it's a solitary light in the later part of the thread, which lets us see just how very dark the shadows are.


Wildcard: 7/10
An accomplished thread, and a solid base for Kat's continued story arc. Good job!

Total: 73/100



Yekaterina Aleratt receives 1480 experience and 175 gold.

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!