Painted Faces

“So, Kid. Last chance. You sure you wanna do this?” Pestered the scarred griffin beside her.

“I’m not going to just fly us back now that we’re all the way out here Anvil. This is the last mission I need to complete before I can get commission for operations in Equestria. And if you’re going to use a nickname right now, use the one on my papers,” Swift snapped back.

“Well, I’ll stop asking then, Flare. Just… Stay in touch with us, yeah? From what I’ve read, it can get quite lonely out there,” Anvil replied, turning forwards as the heavily armed attack craft approached the insertion point, green treetops only just visible under the light of the moon speeding past beneath them.

Flare shot an empty glare at her copilot before looking at the drop hatch below her claws and stating, “We’ll talk about it later if you want, but I suppose we’ll see what comes with the kit,” before smacking the button to open the hatch. Whipping wind and the piercing whine of the engines tore through the cockpit as a fuselage panel pulled back to frame a hole below the drop harness.

“Don’t forget that if you kill all the baddies in five minutes then I’ll owe you a favor!” Anvil called over the neuralweave while Flare quickly clipped herself into the drop rig. The excitement she could feel through the link only added to her speed.

***

Flare stalked the undead mare in front of her down the narrow vaulted hallways of the cult’s hideout quietly. None of the other beings around had made a sound in the little time she had been infiltrated into the stone bunker. Not that the other twenty or so beings in the wheel-like space really could voice their opinions about their current situation, now being not much more than unliving bodies for whatever inscrutable purpose their new master was championing. A purpose that was becoming clearer as every body made its way to the building’s central chamber.

She let her mind wander a little while waiting for the corpse to bring them to their destination. Most documented liches preferred to keep their operations quiet in hopes that it would allow them to further their schemes before being caught. Thankfully, this one seemed more interested in gathering more people quickly as opposed to stealthily, allowing the Bureau of Intelligence Procurement to easily get a fix on what were typically drawn out cases.

The previous hour had gone by in a blur: everything was about avoiding detection, be that by magical or mundane means. Slipping inside was the easiest part. There was only a single guard for the entrance into the underground lair, although there was evidence of three others that had gone to investigate the dropship noise. All she had to do was draw the last one out from the opening and dash past after spending a few minutes to edit the warding scheme. Luckily, it was designed mostly to deflect scrying spells and only had a few low-power alarm clusters that seemed woven in as an afterthought.

Following her entrance Flare had jumped into a polished black alcove and deployed her reconnaissance drones to map the underground lair. The mare she was now tailing had walked through the antechamber twelve minutes later, apparently to buff out a dent in one of the already flawless black metal idols that occupied every dark corner and polished slate alcove. The chilling inky darkness cast from the sculptures’ presence sucked all light out of the air around them and obscured her comparatively small form from view. They seemed to act like conduits and anchors for some larger sorcerous work.

Swift only wished the statuettes she shared the indents with were less creepy. No alicorn she wanted to meet was depicted joyously chewing the heart of a pony they’d just ripped in half. Eating a heart was not something you were supposed to be so happy about. Somehow though, the eyes were worse; the eyes followed her every move despite being only small painted moonstones fixed into imperious scowls and predatory glee. Normally, depictions of alicorns were a good thing. Normal statues represented the two saviors, but these weren’t those. The freshly polished statuary Swift was now painstakingly avoiding while slinking about the halls were of someone else - the Nightmare.

Any further thought about what was stopped as suddenly as the thestral she was following arrived in the mysterious room at the building’s center. She had arrived as the third in line coming from a spoke of the eight pronged wheel the bunker resembled. Swift could see other lines of three coming in from the other halls into the utterly massive room that seemed to be almost completely covered in runes at first glance.

Just glancing at the spell weave made her want to retch her breakfast of all over the freshly burnished floor. Not because it was all evil or something, rather she felt her stomach rebelling at the sight of such a horribly inefficient and disjointed application of magical theories. It looked to her magesight like someone had started out using the ancient Cloverian method for this crime against mages, but then picked up a booklet on the basics of Thread’s Theory of thaumaturgy from a back alley brothel and decided to tack it on as an entirely new ritual.

“Agent Flare, this is Smith,” A staticy voice called over the silence of the niche she was sheltering in. “A sensor perimeter has been set up and a civvy skybike is waiting at the extraction point. May the stars watch over you, and happy hunting!”

Swift’s cybernetic ears were left ringing from the sudden noise, and she flicked a wing in annoyance. I’m trying to infiltrate this group because none of the other cyborgs can hope to achieve stealth, and I need them all to be in one place for the bet, but then Smith just goes and sends a direct transmission to me! After this stunt I am so voting for someone else’s song to be first. Hopefully he brought something other than the Honeda, because if he didn’t I am going to slap him so hard… She clenched and relaxed her foretalons, but refrained from lighting her fire ruby. As things stood she needed to keep quiet and out of sight, not immediately jump to setting the place on fire. Hopefully that interruption wouldn’t be enough of a distraction to make her sloppy, but now she had to be extra careful.

Despite her limitations on movement, what Swift could see was far more impressive than just the scraggly green tail and bare-bones flank down the hall from her. Her three stealth drones showed a room that had almost four times the floor space and nearly thrice the height of the rooms she’d previously traversed. The place was so massive that they were using columns to support the ceiling, and not just some pathetic show columns; the black limestone pillars spread to two meters wide at their bottoms and stretched a mighty fifteen meters into the ceiling. The perfect polish on the gold inlays only served to enhance the otherwise barren beauty of the grand hall. It was ridiculous; pillars for supporting ceilings had become obsolete, and out of style, well over 800 years ago. It was ridiculous, and she could use that to her advantage. Hopefully.

The eight trios of lost were set standing above a shallow drainage channel flowing down towards a large hole in the floor. If they want to fill that up they’re going to need a few more bodies. A few hundred more…, Swift caught herself mid-thought. I’m catching the black humor now. Great.

MOVEMENT! Finally! She thought as her retina display opened a window showing two things rising up through the hole at the very center of the room. One was a great circle with an upwards protrusion centered on a carved runic array, likely an altar of some shade. The other shape was clearly the lich. A well-tended dragoness wearing a white lace dress stood on the rising stone disc. Softly shining scales reflected the little moonlight that stole in through the only skylight Swift had seen across the walls in a soft pink color. She seemed far too young to have died of old age originally, and despite herself Swift couldn’t help but wonder what misfortune had befallen the lich before she became the thing she was now. Unfortunately, she was facing a dragon, and that would be a problem of rather significant proportions any way she sliced it. Her sword just wasn’t long enough to go through that much neck in one go.

As the platform rose, more things became obvious to the drones' visual spectrum cameras. Upon the newly risen stage rested a squat and circular stone altar, a small divot in the middle providing a receptacle for what could only be a blood sacrifice. Old runes of soul and starlight littered the area in what was now a very clear spiral leading to the altar itself, their swirling shapes and spearing beams connecting to the slab seamlessly and curving up the walls to the ceiling overhead from there. It was clearly an attempt at making a summoning ritual, but almost all of the energy was going to be wasted on theatrics instead of being used for the actual transportation magic. Still, what was obviously lacking in sophistication was more than made up for in raw soul energy and blood sacrifice.

So she’s planning to do something with the Solar Seal. What a shame. I thought everybody knew unauthorized tampering was strictly forbidden. Not that the examples ever seem to dissuade these zealots. The thought of such waste, the deaths of over twenty beings, for such a destructive goal hit Swift like a fist to the gut. If only we had- she let the thought trail off. What-if’s would be getting her nowhere. She needed a plan to neutralize both the pink dragoness and her unwilling followers, preferably sooner than later. She couldn’t save her friends from herself if she was still there to kill them.

Collapsing the roof was - unfortunately - not a feasible option. She didn’t have enough drones to destroy even one pillar, and flattening herself into a pile of bent metal, shattered bone fragments, and oozing meat slush was not quite on her to-do list. Yet. Setting the room on fire was also out, but for differing reasons. She’d survive the fire, even if her coat cooked off. Probably. Maybe. However, channeling enough magic to set the stone structure ablaze with TrussFlame would take too much time. Hopefully whoever-she-was couldn’t breathe fire, cast special magic, or fight. But hoping for all of that was laughable, and unlikely to get her anywhere.

Drip, drip. Drip, drip. Suddenly the dry, musty, smell that hung around the structure like the air in an old damp basement was replaced by a new smell, yet not an unfamiliar smell to the young thestral. Once she knew what it smelled like, it was impossible to forget the tangy, coppery, enticing, nauseating smell of spilt blood. Blood dripped from the sagging flesh of the body before her, a nice clean line down the middle of the stomach’s, splotchy, greying flesh burbled the red fluid into the channel below like a small brook. Somehow, the intestines weren’t spilling out onto the floor with it. A ritual cant emanated from the other side of the altar.

Anger quickly overpowered fascination in Swift’s mind. Here was something stealing the lives of others and using them for some petty, misguided, scheme, about to cause untold damage to Thestralia, to her home and friends. She would kill them for that as much as for what their ilk had done to her family. There was only so much time left for Swift to capture the losts’ soul scraps. If only she had more time, or there was less backlog, then maybe she could’ve saved all of the lost intact. Now though, killing all of them as well was her only remaining option. ‘Oh well. I’m a Monster for a reason, this needs to happen, even if that favor is looking to be even longer of a shot by the minute’.

***

Something was wrong. Crackle wasn’t exactly what was wrong, but all was certainly not as it should be. The shadows were all the same, her little lost were in their perfect positions. The full moon was overhead. Even the air smelled right, and yet she was missing something.

She was acutely aware of how overt she’d been while acquiring the souls for the summoning ritual. Even then, the idea that some government spook had infiltrated her secret bunker soon enough to stop her didn’t hold much water, it was probably just a bit of dust in the air. She felt as though she was being watched. Three weeks was all they would’ve had to notice the missing people and then track them to where she now stood, at the center of a hole now occupied solely by the undead.

How was it that she ended up here? It didn’t matter now. Once she finished, there wouldn’t be anything left to ponder. Slitted orange eyes closed, and bony wings flared out of her back. Crackle chanted, a slow, deliberate, and totally unnecessary dirge of supplication to the Unifier. The magic was gathering into the walls already, the blood opal spike was forming up out of the stone. All she had to do was hurry up and wait for the altar to fill.

Drip, drip, dribble. Something was wrong, something was horribly, dreadfully, wrong. Her voice was wrong. Intense confusion flashed through Crackle’s mind at first. Her lips turned down into a frown, and the superfluous singing stopped. Yet there was an echo, if only just for a moment, as if somebody had been singing along with her. It seemed someone else was here after all.

They had managed to sneak an infiltrator into the bunker to get her. Wonderful. This is the point in the novel where the heroes heroically save the day and apprehend the bad guy. Enough! The voice interrupted.

Ever since she’d come across mention of their glorious ruler while excavating knowledge of the old home she had been treated to visions. Glorious visions focused on the savior of all thestrals, and eventually the designs for an array to summon her from her imprisonment. Now she was within minutes of completing her quest, she just needed to focus and cast out the intrusive thoughts.

What to do? There can’t be too much time left before the altar is ready. All I have to do is stall them. Crackle opened her eyes and called out down the halls connecting to the outer wheel, “Come out now stranger! I know you are there! Let us parley!”. She waited, and waited, but there wasn’t any response. Let us try again, something to appeal to their morals perhaps, “If you come out now nobody has to die!”

Silence. Then, “Hrmph, we both know that isn’t true,” came a dry response from the third hall, “After all, I’m pretty sure all these lost are going to die no matter what happens. Plus, I’m here to kill you. And I hate hedge sorcerer scum”.

“Now there’s conviction,” Crackle growled to herself, “Why don’t you come on out of mistress’ shadows and show yourself to your host then? It would be rude to waste the time of the living after all,” She challenged the voice.

“Well, if it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’ll get!” Squeaked the diminutive filly of a thestral pony as she stepped out of the Eastern corridor and into the summoning room’s moonlit interior.

A child. They sent a child to stop me? “I would rather you stayed out of my affairs little one. I wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt, much less someone so obviously outmatched,” she boasted. If dragons could sweat then there would’ve been an aquifer where the room now was. She wasn’t any good at fighting, that wasn’t why she was one of the chosen.

“And these lost? Is them performing surgery on themselves not hurting them?” The little red thestral gestured to the line of unicorns she was trotting past while still walking closer. If I back up, will she take that as a sign of weakness and pounce? Is that just animals? Is she an animal? Is she part changeling? Is that why her voice has that buzz? Crackle took a deep breath in, nostrils flaring. All of this inaction was getting her nowhere but a shallow grave fast, no, now was the time for bold action! It wasn’t like she had to fight for long. just a minute at most, and against an opponent a tenth her size at that.

The agent was still approaching, now within only a clawful of meters. By now she had passed two of the three thestrals in the line. The dragoness steeled her nerves and lowered herself down onto all fours, wings spread wide. Drawing on what little she knew of fighting — mainly from subduing her little band of lost — she lunged for the wings.

The jump couldn’t be too fast, which was something of a problem, as the agent had already dived away from her grasping claws. The dragoness’ landing gauged the solid stone floor of the chamber, carving deep into the stone. Her head swung around to the left to snap at the cowering agent. Her teeth scraped something, or they should’ve, but the mystery filly came away from the exchange unscathed. Crackle quickly withdrew from her extended position only to find her opponent hovering just above the floor on the other side of a row of lost.

“Is that all you plan to do? Flee? Gallop about wasting my time? Delay our Great Leader’s coming by a paltry few seconds?” Crackle demanded. The only response she received was a grimace and a long, silvered, rune encrusted blade slithering out from between the agent’s right ring and foreclaws. Apart from the heavy enchanting of the blade, the only other thing that stood out to her was a rectangular grey stone inlaid through the blade near where it connected with the agent’s arm.

How is that possible? it wasn’t anybody that could just manifest a sword to claw like that, and this nuisance certainly wasn’t among those select few. It had to come from somewhere, but she didn’t feel any change in the ambient mana. Her thoughts were interrupted by a red and blue flash in the corner of her eye and the feeling of cold steel piercing deep into her neck. Without thinking, her tail whipped up to connect with the new assailant. Her tail swept back even as they went careening forward into her sight.

The second agent was identical to the one she’d been conversing with moments before. The new one flew back through her double. Their blade arm snapped out to slow the tumble, slicing the green unicorn thestral below her in two.

That wasn't good at all. If that blade could cut straight through both her scales and whatever bones were in that body then she couldn’t be taking many chances with close combat. With but a slight nudge of her will her ritual fuel suddenly went from just standing there to throwing themselves at the intruder. No matter how sharp the blade or skilled the thestral she would still have to spend some time and effort cutting through the other twenty-three thestrals in the room. Plus, she had one keep itself behind at the altar. Just in case.

Immediately, three of them were upon the agent, five more quickly following. The losts’ coordination was nothing to write home about, but nonetheless three blades converged on the agent. Two from the front and one from behind. The agent lunged forward and between her attackers, receiving small cuts. She threw the left one into the one still leaping at her rear and neatly bisected the other. Picking up the now ownerless blade in her right claw, the mare threw it at the eye of the second unicorn from the East door.

The sliver of metal had so much force behind it it came out the back of the skull. Disused grey matter and shattered bone segments splattered across the thestral behind that one. The agent followed up by stabbing into the ribcage of the already mending unicorn and retreated towards the entryway. That damage was fine with Crackle. If the interloper wanted to be surrounded in the corridors then she was all too happy to oblige them. The loss of two sacrifices would not slow the ritual by any. In fact, it would only hasten her master’s arrival.

She turned around to instruct the lost still behind her to attack the agent's rear through the halls only to find three whole rows of her ritual fodder had had their throats slit while she wasn’t looking. Irritating. Controlling the energy siphon will be far more strenuous now that the souls have been released in full. Although…. She ordered the seven unengaged lost to split into the North and South passages, when Crackle looked back she found that another three bodies had been lost to the agent’s sword. If she wanted the pest to still be in a usable position by the time the lost arrived to surround her she would once more need to intervene.

Getting closer, she could see that her assailant was bruised and bloodied where the hard scales of her tail had impacted the filly’s side earlier, but it had already healed. As she was almost upon the mare she heard the buzzing from the first one, the magical fake, coming up beside her face. Flicking her head to the side for a second she let out a small fireball that should have dispersed the illusion back to the manastreams. Instead though, a charred black ball of metal slammed against her neck wound and exploded into a small fireball.

The animated bomb took a chunk out of her neck but she kept moving forwards. The Great Gift of their savior would tear the metal slivers from her flesh and spine, it would erase the burns and make her whole again. The black ooze would fix the damage with contemptuous ease, making what should’ve been excruciating agony merely painful. She hadn’t even noticed any extra drain on her reserves from maintaining the soul funnel into the ritual despite all of the death around her. Truly, the rightful Queen of Night smiled upon her efforts.

The agent looked towards her as she decapitated the minotaur thestreal before her and her eyes widened. That’s right fly! Fear me! She again swiped at the insolent wretch before her. They tried to slip out of the way, but dodging two tons of angry dragon in a confined space was not a very easy task. Crackle’s second slash landed across the thestral’s back, pushing them into the ground. Blood painted her claws and she smiled at the victory. Her success soured as she realized that she was going too fast down the corridor. She looked up right as she bowled through her encircling force. Her massive body crushing a few and mangling the rest.

Crackle picked herself up with haste and turned back down the hall, facing the one who had attacked her temple. Looking beyond the agent, she could see that green unicorn number two hadn’t repaired themself yet, and the other lost that the agent had cut down weren’t getting up either. A few from the corridor were reassembling slowly, but the ones that had been pulverized into meat paste were never going to recover.

The cool numbness in her neck wasn’t receding, and it was taking far too long for that flesh to knit itself back together again. Already the adrenaline from the initial clash was catching up with her and a fresh wave of exhaustion crashed against her as the souls from the once-thestrals she had smeared across the walls were sucked into the ritual.

Lifting a claw up to the side of her neck the dragoness found the gaping hole in her innards to both still be there, and also leaking a large amount of blood onto the ground. “You’re no mere agent little worm.”

“All this action and you’re still calling me a worm? Could you at least upgrade me to wyrm?”

She was being taunted, and it rankled, but the indignity she faced would be worth the payoff. She pulled on the strings connecting to the hidden lost. It was a risky play, but it’d be worth it to see the arrogant smirk wiped off that little filly’s stupid muzzle. Slowly sauntering forwards to keep the agent’s attention she positioned herself to make a sprint into the mare’s guard once she was distracted. At about ten meters from her target she opened into a full charge even as the agent made a slight turn to her left and threw several blades disguised within her feathered wings at the equally small target sneaking up behind her.

The lich only got a small bit of satisfaction as she watched the agent’s eyes widen just a little before she lowered her head and threw the little, but surprisingly heavy, thing off her claws and straight across the room to the North hall. It was as if the thestral was a solid brick of cast iron. Striding past the small thestral corpse now stuck to the ground and otherwise perforated by far more blades than it reasonably should have survived, Crackle went to inspect where the agent ended up.

The now stitched together bodies of her four remaining usable lost emerged from the darkness of the Eastern hall to fall in at her flanks like some little macabre honor guard. Looking ahead, she could see the agent hovering in the air recovering from her most recent attack. She was looking slightly worse for wear. She was bleeding from a few more places, some of which looked like stab wounds. Stopping from that speed couldn’t have been very pleasant either.

“I’m sorry for this.” All this fighting and suddenly the agent was going to spout apologetics now that they were losing? Crackle didn’t buy it. Especially since the side of the agent’s body was now opening up like some sideways door. “But what's left of you all is hardly coherent, much less intact. Keeping you out of the shard will be a mercy.”

Crackle sneered at the being before her even as she reached past the steel doors bisecting her barrel and pulled out… something. It was long and boxy, like a club, but there was a long hole going through it and a crossbow trigger near the handle it was gripping. It was clearly some artifice, although the choice of steel over a wood was perplexing. It would be far more difficult to properly balance and wield crossbows made out of metal. The wires leading back into the mare were also an interesting choice, one she could understand but two? “Your pathetic bow will not stop us! Your bag of tricks has run dry and you are outnumbered.”

She paused a little for dramatic emphasis before daintily pointing one of her claws forwards. Her guards took off towards the filly. The weapon was turned on her vanguard’s advance, blasting their torsos into chunky paste. The spray flew back and onto the now red dress the dragoness wore, taking the spine out of her sails even as the wind weapon was stowed away again.

Looking around she picked up a bastard sword and the half thestral it was attached to and lobbed it at the agent before her. Her vision was temporarily obscured as the organs spewed out and the pooled blood went flying between them. Crackle leapt through the cloud of viscera only to find the agent Had ducked below the corpse and was now coming up beneath her. Crackle spun to her right, desperately trying to avoid the slash before she lost a limb. Her roar of agony shook the underground as her failure became apparent. Tarnished and black blood sprayed out at short intervals, splashing across everything around her even as the now free wing spasmed wildly in the puddle around it. The yell was quickly replaced by a single audible crunch as her armored hide smashed into a pillar, crushing one of her feet into a tenderized meaty clump.

And this is why I stuck to the archives. There's no fighting involved in reading! Crackle wearily stood up on three legs now, her mobility greatly diminished, and growled. Smoke poured out of her nostrils as she glared at the agent before her. She hated to admit it, but this diminutive little irritant was proving to be a serious threat to the plan. As her pulped foot and missing wing would attest, her adversary was canny too.

Crackle stood and started to circle the agent, hoping to make a break for the dais. While the current situation was rapidly deteriorating, the necromantic energies animating her body had almost fixed her claw and the blood opal had already formed to its fullest extent. All she needed to do was die again.

The agent wasn't circling with her anymore. Why was she being allowed to get in line with the altar? The filly’s holey horn wasn’t glowing, so she probably wasn't levitating a weapon behind her. And she was almost on the threshold of the East hall, so what was her game?

***

Swift was screwed. If the lich realized that asphyxiation was a cause of death then there wasn’t any way that dragon fire didn’t engulf the chamber in seconds. What was worse, her blood was now mixed in with the rest in the ritual, and if it went to completion she was probably dead. The drain on her power reserves from the repeated use of her railgun was also going to limit the power she could put into the next few attacks. Still, for as intimidating as the dragoness now angling to make a break for the stage might’ve looked, she clearly had little in the way of either combat training or experience and minimal situational awareness. So Swift retracted her main armament into her arm and made for a direct approach. She only had thirty seconds left; she needed to make this quick.

She bounded into the air and swung around a now cracked pillar to attack the lich’s side. As soon as she was hidden behind the pillar Swift began casting. She drew power into her horn and formed a small portion of that into a simple wall of force. Now about a quarter of the way around, Swift poured the rest of her attention and magic into casting a quick transformation spell. There was a red flash, and when she passed back into view two thestrals emerged from the other side.

The dragoness was hobbling as fast as she could to the altar. The Swifts swept in on the lich’s right side and tackled the lumbering mass of flesh and bone to the ground just before the blood-soaked basin. Immediately, massive claws slashed through where Swift’s double was, shattering the flimsy apparition into a cloud of illusory fire and smoke.

Using her double’s death as cover, Flare slipped behind her adversary’s back. She stabbed deep into her opponent’s lower spine before the lich could regain their footing. Her sword speared through tough scales and silky dress, severing the nerves in the lich’s lower back. If the dragoness hadn’t already been reanimated they would’ve been properly immobilized by that strike, instead, she gripped the stem of the basin and attempted to pull herself towards her goal. “With this much persistence you might’ve made it past basic,” Swift joked, “though you probably shouldn’t have skipped arm day.” The fight was over and she had the proverbial tiger by the quite literal tail.

Seeing as their goal was clearly to impale themself upon the bloodspattered spike in the center of the ritual circle, Swift decided to give them a faster death. Tugging with all of her mechanically enhanced might, she slowly carved a line up through the lich’s waist, she sped up past the barrel and was almost to a light trot before she reached the thing’s skull.

As her soulstone finished absorbing the remains of the lich’s soul she turned and walked over to face the still struggling lost. It was thoroughly stuck to the ground, but its muscles still bulged and pulled beneath shallow skin as it struggled to attack her. Looking up to the full moon through the skylight Swift sighed before looking back down at the child before her. “I’ll remember you,” she said as she reached up to the girl’s neck, “you won’t come back again, but you will live on. That much I promise.”

In one fluid motion Swift stabbed her sword deep into the chest of the thestral before her and lowered the now motionless body to the ground on its side. She barely felt a thing from the actual killing. It was just like she learned in training: the act got easier every time. That, Swift thought, was what got to her — death was supposed to be a tragedy, not a trifle.

She retracted half the blade back into her mechanical arm and used the bared half as a carving knife. She cut apart the ribcage to gain access to the organs protected within and gingerly lifted the small heart out of its enclosure. She took one bite after another, until nothing was left on her bloodstained claws.

She always thought she would do that when her mum kicked the bucket. That never happened, but she could do it for this thestral. Someone she didn’t know and who wasn’t even known to be missing. The others would be brought back to the tables of their families, but the one before her wouldn’t even get that. Her body would be rendered down to meat for the market and a skeleton for the mines.

Swift stared at the body before her for a few more minutes before turning and walking for the entrance. Her gait uneven and her gaze downturned and unfocused as she plodded back out the way she came. Through the same grey tunnels and past the same silent statuettes staring at her with their glowing blue eyes.