A bright and violent flash in the distance.
Lonely in the night. The shadow of
Arethil crawling back over the moon, stealing its fullness.
And the waters of the Cairou River flowed.
* * * * *
Gaius stumbled into the small abandoned fisherman's shack by the river and fell down and rolled over onto his back. His right leg was missing below the knee. Steam rising from the grievous wound. He was a young man shy of his twentieth year.
Lazule walked after him. The torch in her left hand and its orange light spilling into the shack as she entered.
"Just wait," Gaius said. "Wait, wait, wait!"
"And there are those who speak with corrupted tongues," Lazule said. "Let their words fall unto deaf ears. For they have lost the sanctity of personhood."
"
Listen to me!" Gaius held up his hands. "I can't control it. I never asked for it. My mother, she's in
Elbion, she's worried about me. Talk to her. Please, I...I need help!"
Lazule stomped her boot down his chest, pinning him. Her eye to the flame writhing atop her torch. The light in the shack warping in strange ways as it was pulled away and it began to coalesce in the palm of her free hand. And she recited, "Know that the poison of cruelty cannot be expunged, and that mercy is a thing most fragile. Here you find the signature of the Wicked, the Corrupted, the
Monster, and this delineation is absolute."
Gaius pleaded, "I'm still a human being! I just have a sickness! Please! There must be a cure! There must--"
"Carry with you their names, and deliver unto them their just recompense."
Needles of Light shot forth from her extended palm at a rapid and continuous rate into the head of the young man beneath her. The Needles tore through flesh and bone and all else and she unleashed Needles until his head disappeared into a chaotic spray of red along the ground and the walls. A blood flower, blossoming at the neck.
Small convulsions of his pleading hands. Then all went limp.
She crouched and turned over Gaius' left hand and examined it. There, the described birthmark. She manifested the Shiv of Light in her palm and cut his hand and dismissed the Shiv and deposited the severed hand into her satchel and stood.
And she set fire to the shack and watched it burn and the falling ash and debris buried the body and this became her shrine.
* * * * *
"Is it done?" The guard captain asked.
Lazule reached into her satchel and withdrew the hand of the
werewolf and set it on the captain's desk. He examined the shriveled flesh and spotted the birthmark and motioned to his aide who stepped out of the room and returned shortly with the pouch of docatte.
He set it on the desk and the guard captain pushed it toward Lazule and Lazule pushed it back toward him.
"No, take it," the guard captain said, pushing it back toward her. "Take it this time."
Lazule just looked down at the pouch. Her eye drifting up after a moment to the captain. She said, "Are there any more contracts for
monsters?"
"Not at this time, no." He made folded his hands over his stomach and gestured back with his head. "Why aren't you at your Fortress,
Monster Hunter? I imagine there should be plenty of contracts there."
Her downward gaze upon him. Held steady. "Those who hunt do not require a fortress."
She gingerly picked up the pouch of coins and fixed it to her belt and looked back at the captain, her expression softening. She said, "I wish you a good d-day, Captain."
She turned.
"Wait."
She glanced back. And the captain reached for a paper and extended it out toward her. "Here. Look this over. The
Kingdom of Cintria opened up its borders recently. I suppose it would be worth a look for someone like you. It's a ways east of Elbion, but--" he motioned to the pouch on her belt, "--you've the means for ample provisions."
"Thank you, C-Captain."
He nodded.
* * * * *
Bochanan.
The surname of she who sent out the contract. The guard captain in Elbion had further explained that the contracts had been sent primarily to the Monster Hunter Fortress, thus his suggestion that it would be noteworthy to Lazule's interests. The eldest daughter of the Bochanans, Myrcella, had gone missing along with her betrothed. In the contract it was not explicitly stated that monsters of some variety were responsible, but such was possible. And if not here, perhaps in
Cintria elsewhere lurked her quarry.
Navigation through Cintria proved to be difficult. Here in this Kingdom an open and unrestrained suspicion of those foreign, far more so than in Elbion or
Alliria or the like. Her search for the Bochanan estate proved very inefficient, becoming lost in the unfamiliar lands and finding the next castle or settlement to reorient herself only to discover that they did not know and could merely point to the next settlement or castle for perhaps someone who did.
In all Lazule's travels along the roads and paths of Cintria, peace. No monsters or signs thereof. Yet this lack of evidence did not mean that all were slain. And thus her duty bid her forward.
At last.
With the firm assurances from those of the last castle Lazule had visited, she believed she now stood outside the gates of the Bochanan Estate.
And it would be known if her travel served a righteous purpose.