After what seemed like an age, Shinsou got up to his feet and winced as the wet folds of slit flesh in his midriff ground against each other. Rivulets of fresh crimson oozed out into the muddied fabric of his clothing. It needed cauterizing as soon as possible.

This was a task to which the electromancer obliged perhaps too enthusiastically; a small, sustained spark of blue electric searing the puncture closed with crude application.

“Fucking hell,” The Telgradian muttered through gritted teeth as the smell of ozone mingled with that of seared skin. He moved to rib his friend, but stopped himself. In truth, he was grateful to be alive, and there would be plenty of time for jokes later. So, instead, he buttoned up his coat, and eventually turned back to look at the gore-soaked, churned mud crater. Storm had carved an absolute chasm of destruction into the cemetery, so ferocious was his lightning blast. The scorched earth that remained was littered with bone fragments, charred entrails, black leaves and crumbs of cooked skin that held a distinctive, repulsive odour. Gravestones many yards to either side were cracked or shattered by the force of the attack; their heads now reduced to gravel-like debris that had been strewn across the width of the place.

It was a few moment before anyone spoke, but Storm stood next to Shinsou with an eerie peace about him. A frigid cold swept over them as the electormancer looked on, apparently thankful for the end of their nemesis, but the Telgradian doubted that he would get any meaningful peace from it. All he knew was that, for once, no-one could take anything else away from them.

Storm glanced over his shoulder.

"You don't seem happy."

“The cunt got nothing less than what he deserved.” The Telgradian suddenly turned to Storm, wiping a sleeve across his bloodied forehead. The electromancer watched in surprise as his friend’s expression changed to a frown. “But, I don’t feel as happy as I should do. There are thousands at Whitevale who aren’t here. His life, no matter how dangerous he was or how much he had to be stopped, is hardly recompense for that.”

“No,” The electromancer agreed, “But he’ll never do it again, and we gave him the justice he deserved. That much is for sure. Better weather is coming, Shin.”

There were a few moments of silence as Shinsou nodded slowly, and the pair started to walk together back towards the cemetery’s entrance. Just ahead, the iron wrought gate stood, where on either side the horses were moored to the wall that encircled the area. The gate had become crooked and warped; its jagged iron spikes now curling in the direction of the inner yard, likely bent by the sheer force of Storm Veritas’s electromagnetic powers. The washed limestone walls and finely carved statues that adorned the edges of cemetery had also become cracked and disjointed. As he approached the gate, the Telgradian pressed his hand against the distorted iron latch, and after a bit of a struggle managed to wrench it open to leave. A single glance back toward the wreckage was all that he mustered, a mixture of morbid satisfaction and acceptance sweeping over him.

"What now?" Storm asked.

"Being anywhere else other than this." It was the most honest thing that Shinsou had ever given as an answer. With carefully maintained stoicism, he paused and then narrowed his eyes. “We need to do something about Whitevale. It’s still a smouldering wreck, but we have money in Tylmerande. I say we find a good tavern there, and then find an architect. We’ll rebuild from the ground up, bury and honour the dead as best as we can.”

"Still got to do something about those who followed Durandal and Arius. They had a few men behind them when they burned Whitevale down. What’s the plan?"

Shinsou’s teeth clenched against his bottom lip, remembering the little hand clinging to the spoon. It was far from the circumstances he wanted, and this conversation should have been a happy one. For a moment, he saw Storm thinking about the same little hand. He was right. Durandal was as much a part of this as Arius, but neither man had acted alone. There were still those who had to answer.

“Anyone involved in this, at any level, are dead men.” came the sobering reply.

***

Three days later
***

Shinsou and Storm’s men had come for them at eight in the morning. Through the windows of their safe house in Underwood, Durandal’s personal detail watched on helplessly as the Brotherhood skirmishers surrounded their residence and pinned them in. Their leader, another Raieran named Saara, was in a bad mood. Her mouth had the thick sourness of the stale water she had drank the night before from the river, and she was not looking forward to whatever would constitute breakfast in the Brotherhood holding cells. A flitch of undercooked bacon? A piece of mouldy, crusty bread? She could almost taste the rot already. For once, this morning, she didn't feel hungry enough to want to force the 'food' into herself. Instead, Saara was going to continue thinking upon her plan of escape and divert her attention away from the culinary horrors of the Brotherhood's jail wing.

As the handle on the front door dropped, creaking as rusty metal ground against wood, the young, beaten woman turned her head.

The man was no skirmisher.

"Remember the spoon."

Her expression changed to one of puzzlement, but she said nothing and began to comply with instructions she had not even received, falling into line and kneeling. It seemed bizarre that she be arrested and escorted by Shinsou Vaan Osiris himself. Would the provosts not suffice?

Suddenly, the world around her went dark as a black lance was dashed through her head, obliterating it instantly.

Within moments, the house was full of the sounds of cords tightening hoods around necks, their collars just loose enough to let the men breathe whilst securing the cloth about their heads. The Telgradian’s detail, blank faced men in green jackets and black hats, stared with hostility at the headless torso as they led forth the shackled from their hideaway. Across the woodland road, a commotion suddenly burst into life as another house was raided and insurgents were hauled from their slumber. The captured men could just about hear the sickening crackle of lightning against bare skin over cries of pain.

As the noise faded to black, the traitors of Whitevale realised they were being led into more trouble than they would have dreamed possible. They were not prisoners of war now. They were the enemy, and they were probably being led to a torture chamber, a trial and whatever lay beyond.

***

The loyal men of the Brotherhood had decided they had never seen the Telgradian and the electromancer in such determined moods.

It was no surprise. The damage that had been done to the Brotherhood and to Whitevale was immense. No Brotherhood soldier or citizen of Whitevale who still remained in the town, so far as Shinsou Vaan Osiris knew, had any love for the cabal that had sided with Arius and Durandal, so there was no danger that outside these walls there would be any martyrs of their ill-fated cause. The religious among the congregation had been quick off the mark as usual, spouting their anti-capital punishment diatribes, but Osiris and Storm had been just as quick. The second and third most senior figurehead in the rebellion had already been violently killed, a mass hanging would take place for the rest, and all that before the sun that had risen on Whitevale’s wreckage.

The remainder of Arius’s rebellion had found the wind taken from their sails.

The men loyal to Shinsou and Storm had declared themselves satisfied with their swift retribution. The gallows were approved and constructed from the very timber found within the wreckage of the township, at least the beams that hadn’t failed. A Sergeant, sweating in his provost's uniform, climbed a ladder with the rope that he looped in turn onto each hook. Beyond him, the hillside was thick with Brotherhood men amidst continued rumours that some men fighting for Arius’s rebellion had escaped and would try and spring their comrades from their nooses. It sounded an unlikely threat, but it was taken seriously. The provosts carried their swords and watched the hillsides and valleys below like hawks.

A murmur came from the throng of soldiers who packed the crest. It rose, became an excited shout, and the noise coincided with the emergence of Shinsou and Storm, riding in tandem towards the gallows pole. Shinsou looked at the assembled men, nodded, then looked up at the wooden contraption with its noose swinging loosely in the wind. His aides crowded close to him as the hooded prisoners behind them were marched through the narrow corridor that carved a company of men in two, right up the hill until they reached the building at the peak.

An officer read from a prepared statement in a voice that carried itself heavily over the wind and driving rain, "You are condemned to die by hanging. Your requests to die in your uniforms have been denied. Your last requests have been denied. Your bodies will be buried at sea, and will not be memorialised."

The condemned men stood precariously on their ladders, the ropes about their necks looping downwards. The provost Sergeant looked at his officer and then looked up to the men standing on the ladder, their bodies leaning against the wind. He imagined that underneath those hoods were a pair of dark eyes filled with fear and regret.

"Drop them." The words came from Shinsou as the gathered crowd gasped and then cheered.

The provosts pulled the ladder from beneath the doomed men. For a second, their booted feet stayed on the falling rung, then they slipped off, they dropped, and the ropes jerked tight. They bounced, dropped again, and then swayed and turned from the high hook. Bodies seemed to arch as they dangled. Their feet flailed in the air, kicked out, and eventually their bodies twisted so that their hooded faces stared at the packed hillside. Underneath that cloth, eyes bulged, tongues pushed at the lips, necks were grotesquely stretched to their tilted heads. The men watched in fascination. One of them jerked again, fighting upwards as if for air, and then the provost Sergeant jumped up, caught one of the man's ankles, and jerked his weight down.

The extra weight snapped his neck. The Sergeant let go of the man's ankles and slowly, as the body swung, the legs drew themselves up a few inches.

Arius’s rebellion was dead.

Coffins waited on wagon beds; pine boards, rough planed, nailed together. The bodies were cut down.

Shinsou stared at the whole affair with cold indifference, turning his gold eyes on the assembled officers and then on his friend, who sat atop the ever patient Atilla. The men filed silently and obediently from the hills and back to the task of the re-construction of Whitevale. The blood price had finally been paid. As they rode back towards the buildings, the scaffolds and their crews, Shinsou wondered whether the rumours were true; whether or not there were any more of Arius’s rebellion out there, waiting. If so, would they dare to play the Brotherhood's game, or would they do something completely unpredictable?

Either way, the Telgradian and the electromancer would be ready, and the Brotherhood would rise from the ashes of Whitevale stronger than ever before.