Call To Battle

She tossed the bundle into the creek that it could wash down to one of the many mountain lakes, vanishing into the arms of Aremis, Goddess of Water.  She watched it float away into the dusk, then pulled a blanket from her pack and lay down beside the stream to dream of blood.

She woke to a chilly dawn breeze, the bite of snow in the air leaving a rime of frost on her blanket. She lay in the warmth a moment longer, then threw the coverlet aside, her red leathers creaking as she climbed to her feet.

The clouds hung low, their slate gray bellies bulging with the snow inside.  The few leaves that clung to the trees rattled eerily in the chill breeze that heralded winter’s approach.  Though on the plains summer was just ending, here in the mountains the season of death loomed nearer.

Chardra knew she should return to the site of the ambush to more closely examine the daemons, but she was reluctant to see the charred remains of her friends.  She washed her face in the creek and retrieved a knit cap from her pack to cover her newly shaven head.  She shook the frost from her blanket, and re-rolled it to fit inside her bag.  Then she turned toward the battlefield, and walked the fifty yards that lay between her and the first of the tiny corpses.

It appeared to be a girl of seven or so, and lay as though asleep on the ground but for the jagged slit across its throat, Death’s smile.  Chardra knelt beside the still form, and shuddered to see the red eyes staring up at the sky.  Animalian slits adorned the irises rather than the round pupils of any of the civilized races of Purjiu.

Chardra examined its hands next.  Rather than fingernails, metallic black claws sprung forth from misshapen digits.  The daemon’s entire body looked wrong up close, its arms too long and its legs too short.  Its teeth were like shards of glass, and- Chardra turned away and retched as she pulled its mouth open to reveal a greenish split tongue coiled inside.

“What devil spawned these creatures?” she spat.  “Their presence is a foul sign, indeed.  I must see the Oracle.”

Removing a dagger from the sheath at her waist, Chardra sawed through the tip of one of the daemon’s fingers, placing the severed claw in a pouch around her neck.  She gazed sadly at the ashes of her comrades once more before turning to the north.

She would seek out Radus, in the hopes that the Oracle would provide her with insight into the many mysteries that lay before her.