“This doesn’t make any sense.” Whispered Sir Besian. “Look at these people, Lalauri. None of them look capable of defending themselves, let alone being able to cleave off the head of a werewolf!”
“I know, Besian, I know.” Said Lalauri. “…You’re right, something is off about this place.”
“And it’s people. Truthfully, this whole place makes me feel uneasy. I know the war-pastor said that places like these adytums were created by the White Faun, but I feel this…well I’m not sure how to describe it. I am a champion-knight of the church, a Son of the Faun, and yet here, in one of what is supposedly His hallowed sanctuaries…I feel more unwelcome here than I ever have in one of His churches. It feels like we’re trespassing.”
Lalauri knew what he meant about it, and it occurred to her that he might not be that off either. This was technically a place that they were never supposed to even know about let alone set foot in, according to Gennady. With that being said, she supposed that that was the reason behind this uneasiness and told the young knight as much before sending him back to help the others.
As the most senior member of their small company of paladins, Lalauri ordered the others to clear some room amongst the crowd so they could operate. This turned out to be an odd endeavour as the villagers didn’t seem opposed to being pushed and guided away from the scene, but only because they didn’t seem to notice the paladins were there at all. What a strange people…
To his credit, it did not take as long as Lalauri thought it would for Gennady to regain his composure and return to his feet. Once he was up again, he had her take one of the canteens filled with silverbrew that they had brought with them and pour it into the fountain to purify it of any traces of the Wolf Plague that might have contaminated it before any of the people there tried to drink from it. She watched the water foam and hiss as the miracle of medical science burned away the plague, allowing her to finally release a sigh of relief.
Then they gathered together Anxo’s half-transformed body and severed head, and wrapped them up in the cloak, pulling the bundle farther away from the fountain, so that the grieving war-pastor could speak a word over it before they burned the body.
“Oh Heavenly Father, Yggomni, though I may not know why…though I may not ever know why…today you have allowed my son to pass from this world and into the eternal safety of your sovereign arms. My last son, Father…I ask that you give me strength for the days ahead without him. I ask that you give me grace in the moments when I feel tempted to rage against you. And…I ask that you give me the strength I need to return to my duties with the rest of our company without delay. And finally, as I burn my final son’s body to ashes and return it to the earth, I thank you for the time you allowed me to enjoy my family as a whole, whom I loved very much, as you well know…”
And with that, Lalauri watched as Gennady took the torch they had lit for him and set the bundled corpse of Anxo the Paladin ablaze. The orange flames licked away at the bundle hungrily as they watched. Their side quest was finally at an end and they could now return to the rest of their company of knights to help restore the village they just came from to a state in which its people could operate in some semblance of normalcy.
Then the flames stopped. The blaze that was starting to grow simply died altogether without so much as a whimper, revealing that the only damage done to the body was some singed flesh. The fire never made it far past the cloak.
“What just happened?” Lalauri looked around at the others. They all looked just as confused.
It was Sir Axlan who spoke first as if clearing his throat. “Perhaps it was just a bad gust of wind. Here, let's try relighting it again.” He then took out his flint and steel from one of his pouches and set the fire ablaze again. Then, once again, the fire went out.
“But why?” Came a voice from all around them, sending Sir Axlan bolting upright and the rest of them whirling around to find the source. “Why would you waste such a fine specimen?”
It came from the people of the village. No longer ignoring their existence as they had since they arrived, they were now all standing still and staring at them as they spoke in unison. Each with a look of deep loathing etched onto their faces.
“We mean you all no harm,” Lalauri said, addressing the crowd. “We came here to rid your home of—”
“Leave the werewolf’s corpse and return to where you came from.” said the Villagers. “Do this, and no harm will come to you.”
“What?” Gennady spat out. “I don’t know what’s possessed you all to act and speak in unison this way, and I do not care. Whatever you are, if you think that any of you could keep me from laying my son’s body to rest, then you’re in for a fight far bigger than you could ever imagine.”
Lalauri shifted her gaze back and forth from Gennady to the villagers and back again, repeatedly as she and the other paladins began slowly putting their backs to each other and Gennady to prepare for whatever was coming next.
“No.” said the Villagers. “This village has spoken. And our Master has no tolerance for your trespassing, Sons and Daughters of the Most High. This is your final warning. Leave now, without the body, and our Master will let you leave with your lives.”
All it took was meeting the eyes of the others to know that they were on the same page. She had no idea what was happening, or what these people wanted to do with Anxo’s body, but there was nothing that would stop her from getting it out of there so they could set it to rest as Gennady wished. As they all wished, she was sure.
And when the paladins drew their swords from their sheaths, the villagers simply stared and replied, “I see…as you wish.”
In an instant, the villagers' faces and bodies warped to reveal corrupted forms that were previously hidden from them. The corruption varied from person to person: for some, half of their heads were mutated and swollen with their mutated eye glowing a dull, sickly yellow—Lalauri suspected this mutation continued across their bodies under their clothes. Then there were those who had apparently grown extra limbs and eyes, some even had tentacles growing out of various points on their bodies. They all had black, visible veins just beneath their pale, sickly skin, and their hands more resembled that of monstrous claws. And in the same instant that they revealed their true forms, they attacked, fully flinging themselves into the air, snarling and spitting at them as they did.
At some point, Lalauri lost count of how many of the villagers she had cut down. Where did they all keep coming from? If they didn’t get out of there with Anxo’s body soon, they would easily get overrun. The villagers were much too strong. Stronger than their forms would have suggested, even with the mutations that they had.
Sir Axlan was the first to fall. Tackled by two of the villagers, he fell to the ground with an audible thud and Lalauri—unable to pull away from the monsters that were attacking her from all around—was only able to listen and look around to catch a glimpse of the monsters tearing him to pieces as the paladin’s screams filled the air.
Lalauri didn’t even notice when Lady Christabel had fallen at all. She only noticed because—as she finally managed to cut down the mutants she was fighting—she tripped over the blue-haired Yonderling paladin’s lifeless body as she tried to move out of the mutants’ reach.
“Lalauri, snap out of it!” cried someone as a pair of hands grabbed her by the arms and hastily dragged her back to her feet. She whipped around to see the bruised faces of both Sir Besian and Lady Aine. “Come!” said Besian. “We need to get out of here, now!”
“Where are the others?” Lalauri shouted over the howling and screeching of the mutant villagers. “Sir William? Gennady?”
“Will is dead! They got him from behind!” Lady Aine called back as they ran onward toward the edge of the village. Along the way, they had no choice but to stay close to each other because of how closely the horde of mutants attacked them from nearly all sides. So closely in fact that Lady Aine’s hair kept nearly whipping into Lalauri’s face, making matters even more perilous.
“And Gennady?”
“We lost sight of him!” Sir Besian shouted to her. “Unless we see him on the way out, we’ll have to leave him behind!”
“No! We can’t! We stay and fight until we find out what happened to—” A blinding light of lime green appeared in front of them and—with a force that struck Lalauri in the chest with an impact that she likened to getting charged and tackled by a troll—the three of them were sent flying into the air by a blast of energy. And after the world spun around and around for Lalauri, it came to a crashing halt when she hit the ground hard, smashing her head on the edge of the same fountain she was standing over moments ago. When she looked up, Lalauri saw, with blurred vision, the image of a robbed man letting loose screams and shouts in the middle of a crowd. His body was spinning around as bright bolts of lime green magic shot from his hands wildly, whipping him around from one direction to the next. And just before her world faded to black, she looked to her left and saw the two lifeless and dismembered bodies of both Sir Besian and Lady Aine, with the latter’s soulless eyes locked with hers as tears ran down the slain lady paladin’s face.
