She stared at him, all glaring and tallying up their odds as that stupid grin on his face grated against her. Leo could believe that her shroudspells would not have affect on the likes of him, and if there was a way to remove the fiend, it would have already been done so. It would more than likely kill him, for before her very eyes she witnessed him become weak and rolling about the dirt while he recovered.

"Well, I am glad you are self aware enough to know the thought of ditching you is something common." Leo smiled at him sweetly, not at all a trace of genuine mirth. "Thanks for the reminder that you're a shit travel companion."

She looked down to the sleeping face of the child resting their head on her shoulder. Leo pursed her lip before dragging her teeth to sink into her bottom lip.

"I will put protections on around us. Amything to give me indication of anything approaching. You better put your weight into an attack, or I swear I will ask the Wraithbinder to bind your spirit to... something undesirable. Like a chamber pot!"
 
Garrod laughed, dark and bitter as a man too used to such truths. "Yeah, any time, Leo,"

Watched how she carried the girl. Realized he didn't even know the kids name. Just knew she was a thief. A buzzard who had stolen the wrong piece of kit, from the wrong pair of Cazadores. Felt himself get choked up. Hard to breath through it all.

What if, Oh Bearer Mine, came the faintest whisper in the back of his missing eye. We eat the goat?

"It's an elk," Garrod murmured absently.

Belephus laughed. The elk then...

Garrod's brow furrowed. Frown deepened.

"I will put protections on around us... You better put your weight into an attack...something undesirable. Like a chamber pot,"

A genuine laugh at that. "Yeah, that fits," he agreed. "How full of shit I always am," he nod to the wilderness around them. "A kill, spellbreaker. Fresh. Else I won't have much to give anything comes sniffing after me and my," raised up the bone white gauntlet, all wicked grin. "Little friend here,"

Branches snapped in the near distance. Birds took flight with scared calls ringing across the sprawl of leave and branches.
 
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"Good gods..." She rolled her eyes. Threw him a dirty look. "You're a needy thing."

Leo sighed, loudly so that he may hear her protests. "Dandelia. Halt." The red elk came to slow down, turning her head to wait for any more instruction. "Lay down, let me rest the child beside you." Holding the child was an unspeakable ache. It brought back memories, ones she had told herself to forget for she had left that life behind. She held a younger sister like this once, bobbed the crying babe in her arms until the little girl fell asleep.

Once Dandelia laid herself on the ground, Leo settled the young one beside her. She could not carry on killing with a child in her arms, although she had the spells that would have made easy work. Leo made sure the blankets were tucked tight. "You take the child if I tell you to, alright Dandy? You run, nearest town you can find. A home. A farm. And if I am not there in two days to collect you..."

Leo stopped her soft murmurs, looked over her shoulder to the Fiend Bearer.


"I'm guessing a pitiful rabbit won't do for you?" Leo scrunched her face at him. "I bet the princess needs something like... a wild boar or a fine stag?"
 
The girl, wrapped in her woolen cocoon, groaned as she was shift onto Leo's shoulder. The pain in her stumped arm, dulled by the Spellbreaker's weaving, flared up with the jostle of her weight.

A small child for her age. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall. Weighed only about as much as a heavy sack of grain. Was easy enough to set onto the saddle where she swayed. Her eyes shut in a broken fever's dream. Fresh new scars like lightning bolts cracked at the edge of her eyes. Red and angry with the threat of infection.

Still. Garrod could not help but watch in quiet awe as Leo fastened her to the saddle.

Worse came to worse. At least the girl might still have a chance to go on. To make something of herself, beyond the cursed path that had brought her to this point in the turn of the moons and the stars.

Maybe Leo would take her. The Spellbreaker, for all the tragedies Garrod had heard whispered about her in dens across Khurun, seemed far more equipped to the task of helping a child find any sense of joy in this life.

Then the Spellbreaker's eyes fell upon Garrod. He huffed, and he frowned. Why in all the mirrored hells was she looking at him like that?

"I'm guessing a pitiful rabbit won't do for you? I bet the princess needs something like... a wild boar or a fine stag?"

A cruel bark of laughter. "I'd fucking love a stag," he said with a cruel grin. Set himself back onto the weight of his pack, all ruined heap that could hardly move a muscle as he was. "Boar, fish... bring me a fucking skunk if that's all you can manage, Leo," he said as he rolled his head from side to side. Eyes up on the stars. Heart still aching deeper and emptier than any of the sharp pains that stabbed at him. Fucking moons. Fucking pine needles. Fucking stars. "If you bring me ten fucking crows, I'll eat them all," he said with a ghost in his throat.

The black sword still whispering. Still hissing. Still eating away at the edges of his mind.

Burry that fucking thing, Oh Bearer Mine. Belephus said with a snap. Be rid of it and all its torment.

Garrod laughed at that. "Torment," he said with all the fondness of a bleeding heart.
 
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"Slow down, this is not an all-you-can-eat!" Leo bristled, but dared not admit his list was helpful. Aiming small was not her style, and so Leo needed a larger prize to make her peformance one to remember.

No need to ask how he meant to eat this kill, Leo was sure she would not stick around to witness any sights, smells, or hearing.

"Protection spells first." They were sitting ducks out here, and even though dark was soon to come and Leo would insist they move on without stopping to make camp, trouble would find them however flameless the pit would roar. The Fiend Bearer had revealed he was the beacon, after all.

She drew weaves from the shroud dwelling in the roots of grass, weeds, and wildflowers. Small presences amongst the old and deep roots of the trees around them. Each spell was an asked favour of the natural world. Leo had learned how to ask the earth, the sky, and shroud to aide her, all with tje small price of self sacrifice. With a small knife she liked to use to carve pieces of fruit, Leo drew blood across the pad of her thumb. She let it drop to the grass, painting the green with sanguine.

"Right... time to feed the princess." Leo spared him a fleeting glance before she casted her gaze to the trees. As if she could see past them, the trunks and boughs. In her mind, an image came together. A stag, strong and aged, it had lived a good life. Leo weaved, calling through the shroud. It was a summoning, one she hoped would not scare it off. Death had a certain cadence when it came calling, and the Spellbreaker was merely convincing it to listen to her honeyed request. Her weaving wound around it's throat, guided the strong, gentle beast, and lead it on a beckoning breeze towards them.

A minute. Two. Leo would shush Garrod if he made a peep. After five minutes of quiet, of her silently weaving, the proud stag stepped through the brush mere feet away away behind the Fiend Bearer.

"A kill." She said, recalling his request. "Fresh."


Leo let go of the beckoning spell. She made to move quickly, changing the casting of the shroud to ensnare it. His nostrils flared, and prepared to scamper off, but the Spellbreaker bound it in it's place. Her hand moved upwards, outstretched to her catch. She began to close her fist, as of squeezing life from it. And she was, for Leo was crushing it's heart. The poor thing had no time to fight against it, to try and not succumb to his fate.

Seconds went by, and she released it from her spells.

The stag fell, lifeless.

"Dig in, Fiend Bearer."
 
Garrod raised his single brow at the freshly dead stag. "Well then..." half caught between amusement and distaste. "The shroudwork's going to make it taste like shit," he pushed out with breath between his teeth. Working himself up with a grunt. Wobbled some on his legs. Pain lanced up his tendons. Raw where nerves felt frayed and tattered. Threatened to snap. To pop. Cold and brittle as all of him felt with the fiend's fire gone.

"But thanks," gratitude he had to bite off. He checked the knife at his belt. Ruined as it was from the last time he had used it. Stumbled forward, all dead man walking.

Fell to his knees there beside the dead thing. Head bowed, hair spilled forward in white curtain over his face as he let his eye come shut. Knife still firm in his hand. A full breath through his lungs. Old words he didn't even know the true meaning of.

Rojo como el sol rajado a través de las nubes. Muriendose contra la noche. Some part of him remembered hearing.

Cold thump in his chest. Sharp glass stabbed at him. He put his weight into the beast. With a grunt. Turned it onto its side. Dug the knife in. Split the belly open. Let the guts spill out. Ripped into the innards with his white claw. Jewel catching a flicker of light as the blood coated its crevices. Shimmering its strange otherworldly green.

With the wet squelch of a liver being hauled out of where it sat. Garrod glared at the Spellbreaker.

His bones rattling and shaking. His breath ragged rasped out from the back of his throat. Yet he grinned. Fiendish and bristling. Took his eye back down to the fresh, bloody, organs. Sank his teeth into them. Ate them up. Bit by bloody bit.
 
"Fucking hells." Leo turned her head away, not wanting to see the disgusting display of eating innards while it was hot, bloody, and foul for someone that did not have the appetite for such strange things. She felt her stomach turn, hearing his hands tear into the slashed body and reach in. "Now this is some sort of princess shit."

She wandered towards the child and Dandelia, who rightly had her face turned away the moment Leo had begun her shroudspells.

But the Fiend Bearer unfortunately intrigued her. It was a hard decision for her to ignore him, to call it privacy and allow him to enjoy his disgusting meal... but Leo did not want to turn her back on him for too long. She turned, watched him wrench an organ free and met her gaze. Transfixed by disgust, her gaze was trapped there long after the Fiend Bearer feasted his eyes upon his meal.

She watched him devour. He looked famished, as if a meal had escaped him for some time and he was too desperate to care if her shroudspells would affect the taste of his meal.

Leo gagged, turning around but the sounds of him eating haunted her hearing.

Not a princess anymore.
 
It was a mechanical process. No sense of joy or pleasure to be found in it. Beyond the sick twist he got out of finding out what happened after the consumption. What happened when the truth of things started to poke, and prod, and pull at the mind of the person who had seen him partake in such a gruesome ritual.

Brutal gluttony.

Hand raking and pulling. Teeth gnashing. Throat swallowing. Drinking. No bottom to him. And how the pale jewel burned bright against its bone white fixture. The strange gauntlet that so encased Garrod's right arm.

Cleaner and cleaner from the red mess with each passing moment. Beautiful and strange in that way of things so tied to death. The curve of knives. The glow in a predator's chatoyant eye. The crash of horrid waves. A flash of green lightning.

It wouldn't be the first time a blade turned on him. Wouldn't be the last, if he could put down enough of the slaughter fast enough. So he ate. Faster. More violently ripping and tearing at the slain stag.

Didn't care none that each bite tasted like ash in his mouth. Like the steely tang you could taste in the air after a thunderstorm.

Last was the heart. Squeezed to stop by a shroudmade hand. He smirked wider. Was talent in the that, he couldn't deny. Maybe she'd stop his heart, after she couldn't take the site of him anymore. The sounds of him.

A low rumble of a laugh as he held the heart in his palm. Veins and arteries there beneath the thick muscle so made to pump and beat. His white claws clutched at it. Dug their points into it. Squeezed until it went pop.

Gushed hot blood all across the gauntlet. All across Garrod. The bits of flesh that were once a heart dusted to spent pyre ash.
 
Leo turned away as quickly as she could, not wanting to watch him feast. The sounds of horrid and ghastly filled the area, and she walked away from him and his meal; Leo forced herself not to be sick, and tried to stifle anymore gagging that wished to happen. She was sure the Fiend Bearer would not care, but she was doing her best to ignore him now.

Leo settled beside Dandelia, stsring adamantly at her sweet mount. Her head did not turn towards the Spellbreaker, and that she could not blame her. There was a infernal work happening behind them, and to stare too long, they would all lose their resolve... and stomachs.

"Fucking prick." Leo muttered, hoping he could hear her but at the same time did not wish to spite him. "Remind me, Dandelia, that we are never getting a meal with this idiot. Just the sound of him eating..." Oh, she would be remembering this. Unfortunately.

Another squelch, and Leo groaned.
"Oh for the love of the Wayfarer Moon." She could weaver a shroudspell, make the noise around them stop... but she was keeping vigilant. Even with her current active spells in place, Leo did not want to dull any of her senses at this moment. The sleeping child rested beside her, and their face was one of peace. It had to be Dandelia's presence. The red elk had a way of calming all anxieties.

His feast went on longer still, and with each sound a reminder he was the fulfilment of gluttony. How hungry must he be? She supposed a fiend's appetite was cavernous, perhaps bottomless, but to be shackled to a mortal body would mean to deal with fatigue. Leo could turn away, but she wouldn't be able to ignore him obnoxious dining. Her eyes fell on the child again.

Just when she thought things were finished and they would all leave a carcass behind, he fucking bit into another thing.

"What happened to her arm?" She asked loudly. It had been on her mind, sitting there and listening to him be a disgust. Did he have something to do with it?
 
Wiped the steaming blood off his mouth with the back of the wrist that was still his. "Lost it," he said through huff of breath. Felt his bones crack back to place. Felt the marrow stitching. The fibers threading.

Pulling taught. Stitch after pain filled stitch.

It is almost done, Oh Bearer Mine. his fiend purred inside his head.

"Was ripped off in a skirmish we found ourselves in," he said. Remembering the crazed look in the girl's eyes. The aurora green that spiraled in her eyes. All cosmic winds set to swirl about the dying star that at their center. "I," he still saw all the blood.

Pouring out of Daniyah. A lance. Willed by all the raw fury of that moment. The fear. The anguish. The boiling want to protect. Him.

"I did what I could to staunch the bleeding, and clean up the wound," pointed to where he eventually hacked away at the bone. Where he burned her with the fiend's fire. For that was all he could pull from himself then.

Daniyah, throwing his gear on the ground.

Smell of roasted flesh full in his nose, cutting sweet through all the harsh mineral tang.

Shook his head. None of that fucking mattered now.

Don't come after me... Stay the fuck away.

A snap of branches, the ripped snarl and sucked breath down beastial throat. Rot. Change. Blight. Dripped and poured out of cracked wounds as the first thing leap out from cover. Lunging, all teeth aimed to rip at Garrod and all his horrid smell.

A blighted wolf, come follow the fiend's stench, burning through the air. Boiling in his blood. His bone still knitting back together.
 
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Of course she fucking lost her arm, she wanted to say, but the sarcasm she wanted to speak remained unspoken. Leo opened her mouth to say something else, happy to let her tongue sound whatever it pleased, but something was off.

She stilled, listening, and when his short explanations came through, Leo was back on her feet. A spell washed down her spine, the worst warning she could get. It meant something was coming, and in this dark place, it could just be anything. He had said this would happen. Even if they could not make a fire to draw warmth from, he was a beacon to all things plagued.

The rustling came before the snap of twigs and branches. Dandelia gave a short snort before rising to stand, and Leo gave a firm pat to her hind. "Go." Shroudspells wafted over the red elk, carrying a strong scent of salt and lemon balm. Protection spells, a tethering spell so that Leo could reunite with her mount when things turned safe.

The beastly thing went for Garrod.

Wolves had always been regarded as beautiful, but this particular one had seen rot turn it's eyes into spoiled meat. Maggots wriggled into it, as they did at it's ears, and every gaping wound that festered along it's body. Even the snarl was no longer canine. What whisper the winds had blown, now whipped through the cover of trees and leaves. Along with it, the decay and stench so foul, the Spellbinder paused in her advance to gag. Unable to weave a spell, Leo reached for her daggers. They had been made with silver and iron, imbued with spelled runes to let blood flow.

Did the blighted even bleed?

Leo sent two daggers piercing through the air, not waiting for the blades to slice into the wolf as she moved forward. "Keep it's mouth well away from your head!" She yelled before starting a low chant, but to no avail, the shroud was not meeting her immediately.

Payment. Now it wanted to collect?
 
Atop the red elk, the child sat wrapped in the filthy wool of the river campsite. Dandelia, swift as the wind coursing across the roots and branches, sprung and hopped and fled!

The knives flew next. Sank hard and deep into the blighted flesh of one canine monstrosity. It yelped. Whined. The memory of what once was its mind still felt that most ancient sensation. Pain. Bloom and spread. Pour out.

Stuttered its step.

Garrod turned, his own heavy headed knife, fire scorched and tarnished there in his grip. Got slammed by the putrid body and knocked back onto the ground floor with a hard thwack.

Stars in his eyes at the daze of it.

Black bile spilling from its fresh wound, and all those places its natural parts turned to horrid waste. Garrod's white gauntlet, fiend clawed and opal eyed, jammed into the beast's slathering jaw. Growls rumbling from its throat as its claws tried to rip at his guts. At his chest. Failed to dent quality steel plate.

Teeth, failed to crack the otherworldly plate. Its lower set sank in to the flesh beneath the gauntlet's face. It didn't matter if spikes ran through its cheeks, or pierced through the wolf's snout. It kept trying to tear at him. Its putrid breath pouring out of its throat in gouts of half pumped stench.

Knife handle sure in his left hand. He sank it into the creature's neck like an unholy fang. Sawed. Yanked it out. Oily bile gushed out. Not quite hot as the life's blood of something truly alive as it splashed over him. It felt cold. Smothering without a trace of warmth.

Corruption.

Its jaw just opened the wider. Snapped snapped at him. Stabbing itself again and again against his strange white gauntlet and its tines.

A second wolf traced out of the woods. Then a third. Smaller than the first. But no less blighted.

Garrod pulled out his knife, and drove it in again and again. Through all the pain. All the stink. All the agony that swirled inside him. Teeth bared snarling.

The wolf's head snapped away from the rest of its body. Black tendrils like worms snaked and writhed to reach each other across the gap that now was between spine and neck. The body fell over, after its last scratches and digs. The head. It went on biting. Lighter, quicker. It snaked around Garrod's raised gauntlet, and opened its jaws wide enough to crush about his head.

His eye was wide open, his smile spread wide in a grin as he stared into the strange abyss before him.
 
Every curse she knew, in every language she made sure to learn to do so, Leo spewed them out the moment her spells alerted her to more approaching. Blood. A small amount of it should not have her hesitate, but giving the blood owed from wielding all this power was humbling.

On her own, she could afford such spells, but she had come across the Fiend Bearer and the child after breaking down curses that poisoned a river that fed an entire town. Leo had been spent, but her ever bleeding heart to help won over. She borrowed, little by little, but the devastation she wanted to use now came at a cost.

Blood. It felt that each time she paid the price was the equivalent of singing her name in blood to something long gone and ancient.

The two smaller wolves, blight-touched and no less of a threat, entered the lonely road.

"Fucking shroudspells." She stooped to pick a jagged rock, using it to cut her palm and squeezing the blood that flowed. In her haste, she did not mean to cut so deeply, but she got what she paid for.

Power. She could feel it writhe and turn towards her, and in all directions. It coalesced towards her, filling her reserves and Leo almost choked on it. Too much. She had given too much and now she felt unsteady on her feet.

The Spellbreaker lifted her hand towards the newcomer blights, watched as the earth mocked her and rose in greenery. From the forest floor, thin roots of weeds and grass, the broken down stages of dead leaves, it all rose and wrapped around their legs. It was thick, as if the forest had grown around them over time and stayed that way, but the wolves were alive. They traveled far and stalked the beacon of the fiend within Garrod.

Leo felt nauseous. She still had too much power welling up inside her, begging to be used. Her hand reached at her side, fumbling to find where one last dagger would be found. Time was running out, where she thought she had minutes before she would be consumed by the excess power, but the seconds were draining faster than the sand could fall.

I need a bigger blade. She thought, lifting her dagger.

You do not need one. You already wield a blade.

Her own voice cut through her thoughts, but Leo knew it was not of her own conscious mind that gave that response. Leo braved the distance, faced the first wolf she came across with a colder steel than the one she held in hand. Shroudspell ignited, silver flames licking almost translucent as it wrapped around her like armour. Her dagger cut, one swift arc on the underside of the jaw of the wolf and she watched as small fine legs flowered and escaped the rotted mouth. Spiders. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, it poured as if a pot of them have overturned. They did not last long, for those that tried to scurry her way shriveled up from the flames fueled by her spells.

"Stop letting it play with you as food, Fiend Bearer." She near hissed. Shadows began to dance in her vision.
 
Stop letting it play with you as food, Fiend Bearer!

The jaws snapped about the tines of the white gauntlet. Teeth sank into the flesh of forearm. Cracked against bones of the elbow. Humerus and ulna. Bolts of lightning through the bones. Knife hand shanked down through the skull. Knife blade broke.

A growl from Garrod's throat as his blood poured out. Red so dark it looked blacker than the space between the stars. Drip drip. It smoked and hissed. His ichor. Sizzled. Sparked. Boom. Green flame washed out wild across the wolf head's muzzle.

Wherever his blood stained it, the flame followed. Vengeful in its crackle and burn. The sudden bloom of violent green enough to lift the thing's teeth from where they had snarled around. A whip of his hand saw the smouldering wreck of the head flung off. Wounds searing back shut as his eye tracked the rattle shake of the head.

Eyes turned to wriggling mess still tracked him. Calculated. How best to snap its sloughing jaws about his skull. One last crunch.

Garrod moved. Slow. Heavy. Muscles still remembering how to push and pull what strength was still theirs. A thump of boot. A lunge. Flaming wolf's head burned toward him. Fingers found his the long handle of his monster slayer. Dragged the blade free from where it rest, shift weight, turned heel, snapped hips with a pivot twist. Fibers and sinew stretching to the point of agonizing snap.

Up the great cutter went. Chunk. Crack-crunch. Gush. Hollow melon come clean in two. Snarled and snapping. The two halves of the head fell to each side with a wet thump.

Green fires still licking trails behind the pieces that thumped against the floor.

Breath heavy. He turned to see the smaller wolves harry the Spellbreaker. Grit his teeth, and grabbed his blade with two hands. Step, step forward. Legs pushed him to action. Runed greatsword trailing behind him as he broke into a dash. The second wolf caught the long run of the monsterslayer, just at the legs. A rip. Pull through.

Gait come undone. The wolf's torso crashed hard against the earth. Still snapping and slathering as all its black bile for blood spilled out and spattered from its thrashing.
 
She was going to be sick.

Leo was not sure if it was the overdose of power given to her from the shroud, upsetting her stomach so much a hand hovered above her navel with caution. Perhaps it was the fact instead of true blood spilling from these wolves, she had witnessed kills so strange, that death seemed to have no final effect on these creatures.

The Spellbreaker turned away, staggering a step or three before she fell to her knees. The small broken down pieces of rock and dirt pressed into her knees as she fell forward to her hands and finally emptied her stomach.

It gave her time to reflect. The absolute toll her body had gone through in the past day, where she had weaved many spells to near depletion, refusing to stay in that town because it reminded her of a home she once thought herself safe in. How she saw this sorry excuse of a Cazadore on the side of the road, a child on death's doorstep in tow.

Leo released more of her stomach remembering Garrod feasting.

"Fuck." She groaned, cleaning her mouth with the back of her hand. Leo took a moment to breath, to stand and round on their surroundings. Power pulsed beneath her flesh again, willing her to use it and drain her wells again. Replenishing it always came at a cost, however small it was, she loathed borrowing it.

"We need to keep moving, Fiend." Each step she took felt as if she were stepping on dried, dead leaves, but it was the excess shroud still wrapping around her. Silver flames, Leo was engulfed in them. It did not give heat nor burn, but she knew nothing could come close without feeling it's effects, just as the blighted spiders did. "Hurry the fuck up."

The thought to abandon it all, to say fuck you and your fucking fiend, was a temptation better felt than that of indulging pleasures. No, all she felt was annoyed, exhausted, and far too guilty to abandon the child. Leo only stayed with him to ensure the child got something better out of all of this. She was not in the profession to take on a child, otherwise she would leave the Fiend Bearer behind.

"Dandelia! Onwards!" She called out. No need to be discreet if she was walking with a fucking lamp the moths would be called to.
 
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