Everything seemed to be coated in blood and the ground was carved by unnatural clawed footprints. In the centre of the clearing, there was a winged man who struggled for breath, half mauled and missing several key pieces of himself. He was a disaster of injuries and gore and she couldn't figure out how he was still fighting to stay alive. It took several moments of looking at the gore-filled scene to realize that he was not Vayan, so torn was his body that the key differences that made him Rulin were not readily apparent.

He coughed, letting out an unintelligible cry when he saw her, reaching out towards her with what was left of his mangled hand, gurgling blood in the place of words. She let out her own small cry and only paused to search the clearing for what had caused the damage and brought the dying Rulin here. She could tell by the drag marks that he had not been attacked here originally, and could also smell the scent of the predator fading, telling her that it had run off not long before.

Verana was about to move further into the clearing, toward the man that she knew she couldn't possibly help heal, when she was caught by Anzael. He used surprise and speed to pull her tight into him and backwards from the kill, whispering roughly. "That was a Rulin..."

"He is still alive." Verana tried to pull away from him, twisting out of Anzael's grasp, only to find Ilka and Yantha barring her way.

Verana was about to try to dodge around them when she caught a heady, dangerous scent through the smell of blood and from in place as she tried to identify it. This new smell was not wrong like the predator, but it was new and just as predatory. It contained the smell of violence and power, different from what she had smelled before.

Not evil, not magic, but something else.

When she tuned out the other sounds around her, she picked out the sound of two sets of feet moving towards them at an easy, prowling pace. A few moments later two Rulin men stepped out from the wall of trees across the clearing. She recognized the first man as Byzan, the envoy, but the other one who continued walking from the trees, despite Pharos' warning growl, she did not know.

He looked and smelled like murder , moving with an arrogance that almost seemed to dare them to try him. He glanced down to his fallen man with an angry look, then finally up to Pharos with something close to annoyance. "You're lucky I know you did not do this, Vayan."

He then knelt down beside the fatally injured Rulin, who had turned to him and was reaching out pitifully, still gurgling, trying to talk. The stranger barely hesitated as he took the man's uninjured hand in his own and bowed his head for a moment. Finally, he murmured something that sounded like a blessing, or child's rhyme, as he used his free hand to cut the dying man's throat. The stranger gripped the dying man's hand eyes on the ones that were fading, still murmuring reassurances about the man's strength and valour until there was no life left and the body went still.

He took his time even then, whispering a blessing to the man's soul before standing and wiping his blade on one leg of his pants. Only then did he truly turn to stare evenly at the five of them, as if waiting for something. Verana, even behind her protective wall of Vayans, could see his nostrils flare and his golden eyes searching them for something, though his expression was now free of emotion.

"What did that? What attacked him?" Verana asked, breaking the silence as she glanced to the body, then back to the two Rulin who were standing half a clearing away. They were alone, she couldn't sense anything else within her range, though the smell of blood and death was so thick she felt it on the back of her throat.

"Cassaei." The unknown man said softly, his words a dark whisper, nodding towards where the blood was trailing back into the woods. "It grabbed him near our borders and dragged him all the way here to feast. They love the taste of humans, but anything with wings is irresistible to them. Yet it took off running, and we find.... You."

He wasn't referring to the others, his eyes locked on her as if the four quietly growling Vayans didn't exist at all.

"Princess Veranandein, your majesty." General Byzan said, glancing at her thoughtfully. Whereas she hadn't been around to speak much to him while he was in Vayana, he had seemed to pick up on how little she knew about the way of this part of the world. "Princess, King Drakos of Rulin."

Verana pulled her eyes away from that dark opening in the Wild. Even as she turned to look at the man once more, she found a deep conviction growing within her that it was wrong merely because it did not belong in the Wild. It shouldn't be here, and wouldn't have been here if the Wild was whole.

The creatures were not supposed to be here and if it had run, it had run from the Feyshan smell of her. That was what was happening with the Irlen. Whatever this Cassaei was, she'd bet money that they were killing the humans who had ignorantly destroyed the Wild and enslaved the Feysha.

The thought of it made her heartsick as she turned to look at the Regent of Vayan's longest enemy, meeting his eyes for a long moment, before bowing her head over her joined hands. "Earth's Blessing to you, King Drakos... and you again General Byzan. I am sorry for your loss, I wish we could have arrived in time to change the outcome."

"I suppose it's a good thing we've agreed to seriously consider peace." Drakos said with a thoughtful smile, grinning darkly to her before glancing at her four protectors. "Otherwise I'd have to worry about fighting my way back to our territories. We will take our man and leave you be."

Despite the solemn situation, there was something teasing in his tone that nearly implied that he almost welcomed the challenge. These two people had been fighting for so long that there was nothing but competition and derision between them. Around her, the Vayans bristled silently, hearing the challenge and glowering across the distance.

Perhaps because of it, because no one could remember anything but violence or antagonism between their two peoples, Verana surrounded the body in her power. It was so damaged that she wrapped it tightly with magic to make a coffin, shading it in the same blood red that both Rulin men wore like a uniform. "It should last a couple hours beyond my presence... I hope that will be long enough for you to get him home with dignity."

Byzan gave her a surprised look that was mirrored by Drakos, who then bowed deeply to her. "You show us an undeserved kindness, Princess."

Verana wanted to cry at those implications, the fact that even in a moment of tragedy, violence was the only response expected. She had thought the warring of the humans bad enough, but there was something even more heartbreaking about this tense interaction. Verana didn't want them to go, she wanted to sit these men down right where they were and force them to talk sense into one another.

Instead, she turned to the pull of her Path.

"These Cassaei... are they the same darkness that is decimating the humans?" She asked nodding towards that path in the trees, feeling the certainty in her soul grow before he even answered.

"Yes. And when the humans are gone, they'll make their way into your Kingdom soon enough. Our steel works, but the human weapons don't even cut the creatures. Fire works as well though. Humans did it to themselves if we're honest, these forests used to protect them before they started cutting them down and murdering the little ones within it." Drakos shrugged, before turning to help Byzan lift the encased body of their fallen comrade.

With a sweep of their wings, they were airborne and out of sight.

"This is not a good place, we should go." Pharos said suddenly, turning to look at her as Ilka and Yantha stepped aside.

It was only then that Anzael stepped back from her, his wings folding to hang open behind him, letting out a shuddering breath. She could smell the adrenaline still racing through them and could see their eyes darting around as if expecting an ambush from all directions.

"I can't leave it like this.." She murmured, giving Pharos a pleading look before he could voice the objection brewing on his features. Storm clouds began to form above them, rumbling angrily at her distress. "The forest needs to forget this... it needs to become Wild once more."

When he inclined his head with a look of resignation, the rain began to pour down to wash the plants and ground free of blood. Verana kneeled to the ground, placing her hands into the dirt and finally answering the desperate thirst of the forest around her. It was then, with the water soaking her through and streaming down her face, that she cried, her head bowed to the ground.

It was overwhelming, the darkness in the hearts of people she was growing to care for eclipsed by the darkness growing in the land here. The violence between veritable strangers merely because of the way they looked and the nation they hailed from, a stubborn clinging to old ways of doing things for no other reason than it was what was done.

Verana gave until she felt herself lifted up off the ground, breaking her contact with it. Though she knew that it needed so much more from her, she didn't fight, merely letting the storm clouds drift away as they all turned to fly back to their stone fortress.