Irsa was shoved unceremoniously off her feet. She landed on her back atop the corpses of fallen paladins. Before she could let out an undignified squawk, the wind was driven out of her lungs by Rex dropping on top of her. As she struggled to pull air into her tortured lungs— and fought down the pressing need to vomit from the stench— Rex pulled the smashed inquisitor over the top of them both.

"Hush, lass," Rex subvocalized. "Not a sound."

As her breathing eased, Irsa wished with all her might that it hadn't. Breathing through her nose made her head swim with nausea, and breathing through her mouth was even worse. Waves, but she could taste the rotten flesh.

A single whimper left her, but she stamped it down and wouldn't let another sound escape. She knew without a single doubt that any further noise would invite death. Gripping her half blade tight against her side, she waited. The sound of hooves grew louder.

At the last moment, Rex grunted and heaved the crushed inquisitor to gain some traction. He pulled up his massive crossbow and lay back down on top of Irsa, the smashed corpse covering them and Rex aiming down his crossbow's length towards the cave entrance. His breathing was steady and quiet. His weapon would appear on casual inspection to be just another discarded fragment of the knights' equipment, and the fiend might miss that there were two more bodies than there had been before.

Irsa was almost grateful for Rex's knee pressing against her middle. It made it harder to breathe, and she could only see that as a good thing at the moment. Her position on her back meant that she needed to tilt her head backwards to look at the cave entrance. An upside-down view was the best she'd get.

Waves, but she would've preferred to be blind.

Holding still was no longer a problem, because Irsa felt as if every inch of her had become encased in ice. The hoof beats rose in volume before falling still, and a shadow appeared at the cave's mouth. Framed by the broken stalagmites, a black silhouette appeared against the red sunset.

And if that thing was supposed to be a moose, a fangblade was a floundering tabby kitten.

Irsa remembered how high above her the cave's mouth had risen when she walked in, and she knew how tall she was. With those facts guiding her, she estimated the creature to be no less than four paces tall, at least twelve feet and more than twice Irsa's height if she stood on her toes.

With the fiend backlit by the sun, Irsa couldn't see it in detail. Just the shape. It stood on four legs, but its neck was far larger and thicker than it should've been. Waves, but it looked like the torso of a man instead of a neck. Irsa bit down on her tongue to suppress a scream when she realized that was exactly what it had.

The fiend strode deeper into the cave, hooves clacking against the stone like hammers on a smith's anvil. Where a normal animal would have its neck, the fiend's second body began. Defined abdominal muscles, followed by powerful pectorals, thick shoulders, then at last came the beast's head. It had a long, equine face with dead, black eyes and sharp teeth permanently bared within a lipless mouth. Broad antlers, two full paces at their widest, spread out from the creature's skull.

And arms. The thing had two pairs of floundering arms attached at its shoulders. The limbs bent unnaturally, sitting at rest behind its back with joints turned the wrong way. It even had more joints than it should have, two elbows an arm. That was like... six more elbows than anyone had a right to.

Its flesh was covered in malformed scales with a sickly dark green color. More like those of a fish than a reptile's. They had an iridescent quality, reflecting light in a wash of fetid colors like a thin layer of crude oil on the surface of water. Tufts of coarse black fur ran in patches over the fiend's leg joints, as well as in a bristly mane running from the top of its head, all the way down its spine, and to its writhing, serpentine, rat-like tail.

Worse than its hideous appearance was the sound it made. The fiend panted, a tortured sound erupting from its lungs that was trapped in a Hell somewhere between a man and a beast's voice.

Irsa felt Rex shift on top of her. His crossbow wavered between aiming at where the heart of a man would be or where the heart of a moose would be. Waves, but did it even have just one? Did it have any?

"Waves, no," a girl's shaking voice shouted. "What's that smell? Please, let me go!"

Irsa gripped her half blade tighter. She heard Rex curse softly under his breath. The fiend hadn't come back alone.

The fiend came further into the cave, and the reason why it had its arms wrapped behind it became apparent. With its left-side limbs, it pulled a struggling girl from off its back, where it'd kept her pinned against it.

Irsa knew her. It was Unaya Vorstat, the mayor's daughter. She was just thirteen, now the oldest victim taken. She was soaking wet, half-frozen, naked, and bleeding from a deep gash on the side of her head. Why in the name of tides would she have been taken? The mayor's daughter was no goat herder. In the state Unaya was in, Irsa could only imagine she'd left Makurov— in defiance of the mayor's order for no one to go out on their own— and gone bathing. Defenseless, she had her bath invaded by a monster out of her worst nightmares.

A part of Irsa wasn't all that surprised. Unaya had always been a willful and troublesome girl. Irsa rather liked her. Reminded her of someone, but she wasn't certain who. Not herself, certainly.

Unaya screamed as the fiend slammed her against the wall beside Olaf and held her pinned. Then, pulling slimy tendrils from... Irsa didn't want to know where... the fiend started lashing them over her body to secure her to the cave wall. Unaya fought desperately throughout the ordeal. Even as the fiends arms strung tendrils over her like some evil parody of a megarach, she struck with her fists at its face. One of her blows landed squarely against the creature's eye, eliciting a shrieking bark of pain.

The fiend roared in Unaya's face. It roared a word.

"NOOO!"

Unaya stopped fighting, paralyzed with terror. Rex's jaw hung open, and Irsa wished the world would just end right there to spare her from seeing more of this.

A disgustingly long tongue lolled out of the fiend's mouth, and it twitched over Unaya's throat. "Flaaaaaaay yoooouuuuu..."

Irsa struggled not to shake. Some of that shaking was coming from Rex.

The fiend resumed wrapping tendrils around Unaya. She didn't struggle anymore. As it worked, the fiend babbled incoherently. Deep, guttural syllables that almost sounded like actual words. Blasphemous, profane words. The babble rose in volume, swelling to echo through the cave.

"Rex," Irsa dared to whisper.

"Quiet, lass."

"Rex, it talks."

He grit his teeth and held his aim.

"You ever see a fiend that could floundering talk before?"

"Last time, quiet."

The babble ceased in an instant, and Irsa finally saw the wisdom in obeying Rex's command for silence. The fiend's head snapped to look towards the back of the cave, its dead eyes tracing along the walls. Slowly, the head turned— going a full circle the wrong way— to look towards the cave's mouth. The babble resumed, the head untwisted in a sharp motion, and the fiend finished lashing Unaya to the wall.

The slimy tendrils writhed even as they held her fast. They hardened, falling still. Unaya struggled futilely against their hold on her, but she wasn't able to make them budge an inch. She whimpered as she fought to move.

The fiend tore itself from Unaya and clopped on its hooves down the line of captured children. Some seemed to have regained a semblance of consciousness at its return. They wept with fear, even as they fought to make no sound at all. Irsa almost wanted to join them, because it was coming right towards her and Rex.

I'm dead, she told herself. I'm floundering dead.

Irsa couldn't be certain if she was advising herself to stay still or giving an oracle on what her future held.

One of the arms shot down towards the pile of bodies, and Irsa felt a heavy weight get torn off her. There was a sickening noise of snapping bones and ripping flesh, then the weight dropped back on top of her. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to cry out.

The fiend turned around and walked at a sedate pace back towards the children. The arm of the crushed inquisitor dangled from one of its hands. Irsa let out a long and slow breath. For a moment, she'd thought it'd grabbed Rex.

Judging by the damp warmth she now felt spreading over her thighs, Rex must've thought so, too. Irsa couldn't even muster up any indignation over getting peed on. If it ever came up, she could lie about how all of it was his

I live through this, I'm taking a bath that lasts a month.

The fiend stopped in front of one of the younger boys. It pushed its face close to the boy's and snuffled before moving on. Next was one of the little girls. Katya Urvenk, Irsa thought. She was only five. Katya must've been awake, because she started to cry.

The beast pushed the rotten arm against her mouth.

"...eeeeaaaaat."

Katya's muffled whimpers continued until the fiend snarled viscously and moved on to the next child. Its demands for the children to eat the putrid flesh were rebuffed, the fiend growing more agitated each time it was disobeyed. Irsa imagined that the little ones would have to remain trapped for another month before any of them would consider biting into that filth.

Lastly, the fiend came to Unaya. As it had with each of the others still conscious, it held the rotten flesh to her face.

"You want me to eat that?" She shouted. "Get it away from me! You demon!"

The fiend grabbed Unaya by the jaw and forced her mouth open. It tried shoving the fingers down her throat. "EEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAT!"

Unaya gagged and started coughing. The fiend pulled away. It hissed and spat before throwing the arm down with a moist thunk. Hooves stamped over the refused meal in agitation, pulverizing it into mush against the stones.

"Why?" Unaya demanded between gasping breaths.

The fiend bent to stare into her eyes. "Wennnnndiiiiiiigoooooooo..."

Irsa's grip on her half blade was no longer enough to stop her hand from shaking. She could hear it rattling against her hauberk as loudly as if it were the ringing of an alarm bell. The fiend... it was attempting to force cannibalism on the children. Such a thing was taboo for many more reasons than simple health concerns or decency towards the dead. In Altier Nashal, such acts were punished with far worse than a high risk of contracting the droops.

There were fey, incorporeal fey born from spirits of ravenous hunger, that were drawn to the eating of one's own kind out of desperation. They inhabited the offending body, possessed it, and transformed them into the hideous, ravenous beast known as a wendigo.

That's what the fiend wanted. It wanted to use these children to create a wendigo!

The fiend must've heard something of Irsa's trembling. Its head turned slightly towards her.

"Rex," she whispered.

He kept still. The fiend's eyes fell on Olaf.

"Rex, shoot it."

"Quiet."

The fiend reached for the boy. Its gnarled fingers brushed against the tendrils holding him.

"Rex, please."

Those fingers pulled a tendril away from the boy. The slime-encrusted rope had been sliced through when Rex tried cutting him free. A rumbling growl grew from deep within the fiend's chest.

"REX!"

The fiend bellowed right before Rex's shot slammed into its chest. The beast was thrown back, smashing its body hard against the wall next to Unaya. It fell over, legs and arms scrabbling for purchase as it tried to right itself.

Sweet merciful waves, that crossbow packed a wallop!

Rex rolled off of Irsa, and she scrambled to her feet. While the fiend hunter took a knee and fixed a crank to his crossbow to rearm it, Irsa did what might have been the most foolish thing she'd ever done in her life. She charged at the fiend while loosing a bellow of her own, calling out at the top of her lungs.

"For Altier Nashal, and the highest calling!"

Rex looked up from his crossbow to shout after her. "Daft girl, go for the legs!"

Irsa's foot landed on the lip of the hot spring's cistern, and she leaped. She hurtled over steaming, stinking water and right for the monster. With half blade held over her head in both hands, she brought it down with every ounce of strength her arms could muster. The old sword ripped through the scaled hide of the fiend's hind leg, cutting into the thick femur.

She tucked into a roll when she hit the ground, maintaining her blade's contact against the creature's foul flesh. As she reset on her feet, she used her momentum to grind her blade against the bone and ripped the cutting edge across the beast's haunches. Bone splinters and black, fetid blood sprayed out of the gaping wound Irsa inflicted. The fiend howled.

Irsa didn't stop moving. Her swordplay was entirely self-taught, but she'd figured one thing out early on. Stop, and you die.

Even as the fiend got its legs back underneath it and half-limped, half-stumbled away from her and into the cave's mouth, Irsa charged at it again. Rex's crossbow bolt was buried deep into where a man's heart would be, so Irsa thought to go for the other. She visualized in her mind where a moose would keep its heart and aimed the point of her sword for that spot. With a shout, she smashed into the fiend and drove her blade down to the hilt into its body. Dark, stinking blood fountained out of the wound over her hands.

The fiend shrieked. It's cry hung between the reedy, distressed call of a moose and the agonized cries of a wounded soldier.

The thing's blood was slick like oil. As the fiend bucked away from her, she lost her grip on her sword. The hilt was ripped away from her, leaving her unarmed as the beast loomed over her with it's fanged maw and four arms all wide open. It reared up on its hind legs, ready to crush her flat beneath its hooves.

Rex's crossbow struck true. The bolt slammed between the fiend's fore legs and sent the creature tumbling onto its back and out of the cave.

Irsa saw her half blade's hilt sticking out of the fiend's flank. She thought she might have just enough time to make a grab for it. Unfortunately, she underestimated how quick the fiend was. Just as he fingers brushed against the hilt, a pair of hands seized upon her hauberk and pulled her bodily off the ground. The fiend got back on its feet and held her dangling in front of it. Irsa had one moment in which she was fully aware of exactly how much this was going to hurt.

The fiend pulled back another of its arms and punched Irsa in the stomach hard enough to send her flying back into the cave. She flew right into the hot spring, but her velocity and angle of descent were just enough that she actually skipped off the water's surface and continued on to strike the wall at the back of the cave.

Irsa landed on her hands and knees on top of the half-breed paladin, dizzy as she could ever remember being and feeling the scalding water drip down her back. She patted her stomach and chest, searching for broken bones. Waves and tides, but she really should've come out of a hit like that worse than she did. It hurt, but the blow had been closer to a violent shove than an actual punch.

She looked up to find Rex gaping at her as he furiously worked the crank to load a third shot.

"Winds, are you alive?"

"Don't know," she choked out. Waves, but it was hard to breathe. At least she had more pressing matters to worry about than the stink.

The fiend roared as it ripped Irsa's half blade from its flank. It took the weapon in all four of its hands and wrenched it until it bent almost in half. With a final twist, it snapped in two. The fiend then tossed the broken shards of Irsa's sword away.

Rex fit a bolt into place and stood. "If you can move, cut down the mites. Get them out of here!"

Irsa tried to stand but only succeeded in pitching forward onto her face. She tried to call after him, but Rex was already howling at the top of his lungs as he charged at the fiend. Irsa couldn't see what was happening up there. She couldn't floundering see!

The heavy snap of that portable siege engine of a crossbow firing went off again, and the fiend shrieked once more. Those shots hurt the creature, but nothing either of them did seemed enough to even slow it down, let alone kill it.

"Get the kids," she wheezed against the cave floor. Irsa tried to stand, but it seemed that the fiend had hurt her more than she thought. She just couldn't feel the pain yet. "Get the kids. Get the... Aagh!"

There the pain was. Irsa felt a curious sense of detachment from the hurt. She told herself that one of her ribs was cracked, could feel it pushing into parts of her it wasn't meant to go. She couldn't bring herself to care. Not when her people were in danger. Not while a floundering foreigner fought for them and Makurov's protector lay useless and unarmed on top of a pile of dead knights.

This was Irsa's home. Her land. Altier Nashal, the most beautiful kingdom in all the world. White and cold and pure. This land belonged to her, not to these fiends and traitors who despoiled it.

No, if Irsa had ever been worthy of her dream, she couldn't let herself stop for one broken rib and a nightmare of pain. She grit her teeth and threw her hand out for something to hold on to. Her fingers wrapped around something solid, something hard. It felt right in her grip.

Irsa lifted her eyes and found she'd grabbed onto the hilt of a paladin's full blade.

White Lady, she prayed. Mother Sun. Celestial Maiden. Deep One. Furthest Light.

The claimed sword scraped against the stone floor as she leaned her weight on it to rise.

Ember King. Scarlet Wave. Last Shepherd. Vernal Breeze. Great Spider. Any god who'll hear me.

One foot underneath her. The other followed. Her breaths came ragged, each one sending a fresh wave of pain through her body.

"I'm no paladin," she whispered, "but even so, help me. Help me slay this demon."

Her vision blurred, and in the red light of the setting sun, she saw the darkened silhouettes of two combatants, one mortal against a monster. Rex darted around the fiend as he sought out an opening to fire his crossbow.

She took a step towards the battle, dragging the full blade behind her. It was heavy, almost too heavy for her to pick up even if she weren't already halfway beaten to death. The thick blade wasn't one meant to be wielded by anyone but a paladin.

Irsa shook her head in a vain attempt to clear it. For the brief moment she closed her eyes, she saw an alien landscape, one bathed in starlight beneath a violet moon. A pristinely still pool of water. And eyes. Black eyes, but far different from a fiend's eyes. These shone with wisdom, an ancient knowing, and glittering stars within their depths.

A hallucination. Nothing more.

Irsa took another step, then another. The full blade seemed to grow weightless in her hands.

The fiend pulled tendrils from its body. It wielded them like lashes in each of its four hands. It struck at Rex again and again, the hunter barely able to avoid its strikes. Irsa watched it play out as if through clouded glass. Each moment felt like minutes, each minute an hour. She continued forward.

Irsa ran. Her voice roared.

The fiend's lash struck Rex across the face. He was thrown into a cartwheel through the air and landed heavily on his side. Irsa emerged from the cave, the full blade held above her head in a high guard.

Rex looked up, and his eyes widened as they fell on Irsa. The fiend turned to face her and bellowed. The dead, black eyes on the fiend's face at last took on a measure of life, and in them, Irsa saw fear.

She lunged forward and slashed the full blade down across the fiend's torso. As if from a distance, she saw the blade glowing with a soft light. Black blood and the fiend's agonized cries showered over her. Irsa shouted her throat raw as the blow's momentum pulled her down to one knee before the fiend.

A river of foul blood poured out over the ground. Then, the unnatural torso separated from the rest of the creature and landed before Irsa with a wet thud. The beast's legs spasmed with one final kick before falling still forever.

The fiend was dead.

Irsa remained down on one knee, panting, and waves take her but she couldn't move an inch if she wanted to. She stared out and watched as the sun touched the horizon.

"Woo!" Rex crowed. He promptly flopped onto his back and started laughing. "I tell you, lass, you had it about right. Was glad for those biceps."

"Hey, Rex."

"Aye?"

"Would you... err... would you maybe when you tell people about this... leave out the part where we pissed all over each other?"

"Yeah, no idea what you're talking about."

"Good man." She sucked down air as if it was the only thing keeping her from dropping dead. Come to think of it, that might not've been far off the mark. "So, those kids..."

"Winds!" Rex rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up to his feet with a pained moan. "Think you can have some un-sulfured water ready by the time I bring 'em out?"

"Aye, just... Just give me a sec, eh?"

"After what I just saw, take two." He shuffled his way back into the cave, mumbling once more about being too old for this shite.

"And nab a cloak off one of them paladins, would you?" Irsa shouted over her shoulder. "Unaya don't need no dirty, old man leering at her. Give her something to preserve her decency."

His retort echoed out of the cave. "You can shout, you can help out. My pa always said so."

Irsa grunted and rocked herself up to both feet, using the full blade as leverage. Waves, but how in the name of tides had she picked up the dratted sword before? Adrenaline was a crazy thing, she supposed.

Forcing herself to move, she made her way into the cave after Rex. She was already formulating plans on how to fashion a litter. Some of the kids would be in too rough a shape to move on their own, and she couldn't carry more than one or two in her state. Dragging them, however, was something she thought she could manage.

She shooed Rex away from where Unaya was restrained and worked at slicing through the tethers herself. Once the mayor's daughter was free, Rex had a couple cloaks ready for Irsa to tie them about the girl's waist and shoulders. Not ideal, but it would keep the worst of the cold off her. It was hard to do while the young lady kept jabbering on about how magnificent and valorous she thought Irsa had been.

Rex rolled his eyes as he helped little Katya down and finished cutting Olaf loose. He looked like he was in the worst condition, but even he seemed to light up with a little strength when he saw the fiend's corpse lying outside. None of the children, excepting maybe Unaya who avoided being imprisoned long, was quite strong enough to walk on their own.

The return back to Makurov just might've been the worst part of the entire ordeal, but Rex reminded Irsa that this was just the fatigue talking. Even so, seven kids were a bugger to drag two and a half leagues through the forest, even with Unaya lending a hand.

Their entry into the outpost town was met with a chorus of cheers from the goodfolk. Waves, but the mayor didn't even seem to have noticed that Unaya had gone missing. That earned him a proper tongue lashing from both his wife and his daughter.

Mothers and fathers collected their children and carted them to the edge of town where the sky woman kept her home. The old healer should have the remedies the children needed to purge the sulfur from their bodies. Irsa imagined she should also head that way before long— her rib hadn't magically begun to feel better anytime during the long walk home— but she didn't feel ready to be in the presence of people again. Between bear and fiend hunter, she had too much urine on her than she was willing to subject her neighbors to.

"Huh," Rex grunted as the two of them stood side by side in the middle of a deserted square. "They certainly didn't stick around."

"Got kids to mend, Rex," Irsa sighed. She slung her new full blade across her shoulders and curled her arms over it. "That takes priority over giving accolades."

"Maybe," he allowed, "but no one 'round here better forget I was offered fifty gold marks to take on this job."

Irsa frowned. "Weren't it thirty?"

"Like Hell," he spat. He eyed her sidelong. "Now, this might sound a bit out of the blue, but you court men?"

Irsa wondered if her expression was more amused or surprised. She felt her heart beat a little faster. "I've smooched a shepherd boy or two in my time."

"Ah, just wondering, is all."

"Hmm, I bet you were."

"Eh? What's that?" Rex's scarred face screwed into a look of vague disapproval. "Don't get no funny ideas. I'm not asking for me."

"Oh?"

"It's just that I got a son roundabout your age. You seem his type of young lady."

Irsa turned to look at him, her jaw dropping. "You are a lot older than you look."

"Thank you kindly."

Irsa turned away, feeling a slight bit huffy for reasons she was unwilling to quantify. "What's his name?"

"Rex."

Irsa wrinkled her nose. "Just to ease my mind, this pa you mentioned. His name would be..."

"Rex."

"Waves and... And his pa?"

"Rex. Same with my greatfather, since you're asking so many blustering questions, you nosy little slip."

Irsa rolled her eyes and started walking away. She angled the direction of her strategic withdrawal towards the inn. One way or another, she was going to find herself inside one of their copper tubs before the night was through. Irsa thought she was owed that much. She didn't mind too much that Rex shouldered his crossbow and followed her a few steps behind, grumbling about blustering Altieri girls and their foul moods.

He didn't know how foul her mood really was. A fiend was dead, but not the questions it left behind. Where'd it come from? By what reasoning did it want to force children into becoming wendigos? Was it acting on its own purposes, or was it sent? Why had she thought her new full blade started glowing as she struck the fiend down, and why had she saw a vision of some other world with eyes like starlight? Had those fallen paladins ended up in the cave due to the fiend, by chance, or perhaps by Fate? Irsa didn't have an answer for any of it, and until she was cleaned up, fed, rested, and maybe had the sky woman look over her bumps and bruises, she didn't have much motivation to find out.

She was, after all, just some nameless orphan who happened to find a sword.