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Chapter 40: The Silvervein Runs Crimson

  Shrouded beneath a tangle of thick vines and suffocating undergrowth at the edge of the Bramblewood, Dahlia crouched against Mr. Disapoofer’s head. The Ebon Chorus stood in shock; only Tarik made a noise—he loudly ground his teeth. Tarik’s barely restrained fury seemed to flow into the Bramblewood around him, and nature seemed wrathful and angry on his behalf.

  Riverwatch—a quaint little frontier village with houses and homes of sturdy timber and stone, of bustling human voices and ferry bells—had become a graveyard wrapped in the stench of blood, smoke, and iron. The Silvervein River, which stood in Dahlia’s memories as a brilliant ribbon of crystal blue, ran dark. The waters were choked with death. The twisted eddies danced across the water's surface, ripples not formed by the wind but by the bodies caught on the jagged rocks, drawing the watchers' eyes into the scene of a terrible atrocity.

  Dark wasn’t the word for the color of the Silvervein. Dark could imply black, or blue, or even purple. No, the river wasn’t dark; it ran crimson—thick, heavy, the color of freshly spilled blood.

  Why? How?

  Riverwatch’s population had been small, barely a thousand. River Home, just across the mile-wide water flow, was only slightly larger. Even if every single soul in both settlements had been slaughtered, it shouldn’t have been enough to turn the river red.

  Yet, the current churned a dark red, and clumps of what looked like coagulated blood washed up along the banks, along with pale, bloodless corpses. The stench of iron and rot, from over a hundred yards away, stuck to Dahlia’s nostrils and threatened to fill the back of her throat with rising bile.

  There had been no battle here. This was a slaughter, a purge.

  Only one line remained where two thick ferry lines had once stretched across the vast width of the river. The other had been severed. A few feet of thick line fluttered in the wind from the mooring poles when a powerful gust picked it up. The single remaining line, the thickest length of taut rope Dahlia had ever seen, swayed in the breeze. The ferry connected to the remaining line was moored against the bank on the side of Riverwatch—of the other ferry, there was no sign.

  Dahlia’s eyes finally flickered to the palisades that surrounded Riverwatch. Other than the thick stone walls surrounding the cemetery, hundreds of bodies hung from the wooden palisades, their feet dangling at the ground where vermin, monsters, and their ilk could feed upon the dead—and still dying. The deaths of those who had passed had not been merciful. Excruciating incisions and terrible brands marked nearly every fleshy body, living or dead, that Dahlia could see.

  The freshness of the corpses created a stab of annoyance in Dahlia. She had come, nearly straight away, and she arrived to this? The day of hiking through the Bramblewood had been unavoidable, but she had come in haste. The swiftness with which these Feybane Inquisitors performed atrocities spoke not only of extreme preparation but also of vast experience.

  “Why?” Dahlia asked Tarik.

  The human hesitated. He seemed uncertain how to answer her. He started to speak—once, twice—but the words caught in his throat each time. He frowned, his eyes pulled again and again to the hanging bodies. Their silhouettes swayed like broken marionettes against the blood stained palisade posts.

  How could he explain it? How could he put into words what Dahlia, a fairy, might not even grasp? The Realms Fairy had cruelty, predators, curses, the cold impartiality of nature—but was it like this? Did the Fey seek pain for its own sake?

  Dahlia could see the misunderstanding clouding the druid's mind as he exhaled and rubbed a hand to his scarred shoulder, which bore the Feybane brand and occasionally emitted the fresh scent of burning.

  “Because it’s easy,” Tarik said quietly. Quieter, barely above a whisper, he added. “Because they can.”

  But that wasn’t explanation enough to push the association of guilt for his own race away, before the mixed races of the Ebon Chorus, all their eyes judging him.

  “The Inquisition calls this justice. Their gods demand order, purity. But this?” Tarik gestured to the corpses, to the bloody river, and the husks of burned buildings beyond the palisade. “This isn’t faith. This isn’t war. It’s fear, Lady Dahlia. It is control. All the ugly parts of being human—the part that would rather destroy something beautiful than admit it cannot be owned.”

  Tarik’s jaw clenched.

  “And once they start, they do not stop,” Tarik said. His eyes swiveled to meet hers, studying to see if he had reached through the racial or existential divide separating a noble Fey and a mortal.

  “You want to know why?” Tarik steeled himself before he spoke his truth. “Because someone told them they were right, and no one was strong enough to stop them.”

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  The grinding of Tarik’s teeth halted. He stared at the crimson currents, the remains that washed up on the banks of the Silvervein, and his fingers curled into fists. His speech was low, measured, and rife with bitterness.

  “Iron alone does not stain a river red overnight,” Tarik answered. His narrow eyes swept the water, the palisades, the river banks with their slippery stones slick with far more than mere river foam.

  “It isn’t just blood.” Tarik’s voice caught. He gestured towards the churning of crimson waters, the slick rocks, the tangled corpses caught in reeds and eddies.

  “Everything they poured into the water—the anguish of hundreds, the weight of their agony… Don’t you see? The roots drink it now.” Tarik’s teeth ground again, loudly, as his jaw tightened. “Why? To strengthen the harvests of the forests. Maybe it's because they’re trying to weaken me. Or you. Or both of us. Perhaps they wanted to make an example out of those who dared to honor a hero who saved them when, by their beliefs, it was better they all die in the first place?”

  Tarik spat to the side, frustration escaping in a thick hiss of breath, self-recrimination clawing at his thoughts like the brambles surrounding them.

  For the briefest of moments, he met Dahlia’s gaze. Then he looked away.

  Dahlia wondered if all humans hated themselves as much as Tarik Nazari did. The man was interesting but also ripe for plucking Glimmer from if they were not in such an awful situation.

  “Will there be any survivors?” Dahlia asked.

  Tarik exhaled slowly through his nose, his fingers still curled at his side. He seemed desperate to control himself and his anger. The river answered for him—a wet, hollow thump as something heavy struck a rock downstream.

  A body. A large man. Dahlia recognized Griff.

  “Survivors?” Tarik asked bitterly. “Maybe. Suppose they ran before the inquisitors descended, maybe if they hid well enough. If we’re considering miracles, then perhaps if they were lucky, or blessed by a patron deity.”

  The despair of the mortal seemed to only reinforce a dark anger within the Ebon Chorus.

  “But if they’re still here?” Tarik glanced at the crimson river, the bodies hanging from the palisades, the smoke that curled up from and obscured River Home. “Then they aren’t survivors yet.”

  Beyond the corpse-laden palisades, in the muddy allies of the forest side of Riverwatch, a scream echoed through the air.

  Faint. Distant. The scream ended abruptly, cut short.

  Tarik swallowed.

  “Or maybe,” he murmured in a grim, resolute voice, “we’re already too late for anything but vengeance.”

  The heavy words hung between them, the bitterness and unspoken grief a palpable thing. The verbal wet blanket smothered the last embers hope, ending the conversation with the cold weight of inevitability.

  Until—Tarik sighed. He took a deep breath, drawing the vile stench of death into his chest.

  “I will go this alone if I must,” he murmured. Without another word, he leaped forward.

  Tarik’s skin blurred, and his bones cracked, twisted, and rearranged themselves with the swiftness of a master. His breath caught once—a single moment of clumsiness in an otherwise perfectly fluid transition—before his skin split into fur, his limbs stretched, his belly arched, and he landed with the grace of a predator.

  Four immense paws crashed into the grass and dirt beyond the edge of the Bramblewood, past safety. From human to beast, the druid now prowled as a creature Dahlia had never seen before, but it bore strong similarities to a tiger.

  Whatever creature this was, it was a striped phantom of fangs and fury, stepped straight from the fevered dreams of mortal legend and nightmare.

  The beast’s fur burned with the colors of autumn flames, and its stripes were jagged and abrupt, like the wounds it would create with the lightest slash of its vicious claws. The sheer size of the beast struck Dahlia momentarily silent. This thing was no natural predator—Tarik’s newest beast form dwarved Mr. Disapoofer twice over. His shoulders rolled with the effortless power of a creature that owned the day and night, the hunt, and really, anything else it decided to own.

  The ground rumbled beneath Tarik when he padded forward, his long tail flickered once—a silent warning, or maybe a challenge.

  Then the Druid was gone. He slipped into smoke and shadow, leaving Dahlia with the bitter choice of whether to follow—or let him face whatever lay ahead alone.

  “That’s the problem with mortals,” Xeras muttered, his tone edged with both exasperation and inevitability. His green eyes swept the burning husk of Riverwatch, cold and calculating. “Even the older ones are still young.”

  Despite his words, Gloombough whispered free of its sheath, and spectral green flames burned along the blade, save the violet rune of alacrity.

  I have tasted the souls of these Feybane fools before.

  Shriekfang’s voice slithered through the air, slick with anticipation, dripping with a hunger that bordered on obscene.

  They are pleasantly pungent. May I feast upon them, Princess of my Chains?

  Shriekfang practically drooled, but Dahlia couldn’t take the rapier seriously. Its thirst for carnage suited Dahlia, but the eerie eagerness it showed to be wielded by Xeras was at odds with its elegant, sleek form. Even its Evil Eye seemed to change into a mockery of itself when the blade rubbed its hilt against Xeras’s free hand like some needy, attention-starved pet.

  The Gloamknight didn’t even acknowledge it. He didn’t shove it away. No sneer. Xeras didn’t react to the blade as if its existence were immaterial.

  That absolute indifference somehow sent Shriekfang into an even deeper, borderline perverse spiral of desperation. The cursed blade nearly vibrated in its pathetic, desperate attempt to be wielded by the fey warrior again.

  Dahlia coughed.

  “You’re embarrassing yourself,” Dahlia muttered to the rapier. Then, after a beat, she added—“and me.”

  “Arf!” I smell iron, so much iron. They are ready for you, master! Mr. Disapoofer warned.

  “Good thing at least half of you aren’t cursed by vulnerabilities to iron anymore. Leave enough of their remains for me to speak with the Dead later.”

  “Do we give chase?” Drynthor asked, uncertain why they hadn’t yet charged the town.

  Ruth pointed down.

  The rest of the Ebon Chorus looked down to see that a ring of withered mushrooms had grown around them, while they had been stationary.

  “Your orders, Lady Dahlia?” Elyssandra asked, as she and the squad from Vesperis Morghaine were pulled through the ring.

  “Kill every Inquisitor you find,” Dahlia chirped.

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