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A Scarlet Monastery incursion with a stubborn shield, a giant bat, and bread for a skeleton.
I have seen sensible parties look at Scarlet Monastery’s gates and decide that its red-and-white occupants were someone else’s problem; the company of Blaedy, Meho, and Arrowyy did not. Beneath Tirisfal’s gray sky, Meho led in shield and mail, Blaedy close behind, while Arrowyy and Friendly the bat followed with the patience of people expecting trouble and the good sense not to say so aloud. The monastery had zealots, cramped stonework, and a chapel that kept more than candles; before the night was out, it would also involve a skeleton, a bread shop, and the sort of explanation I was glad to be present to record.
Arrowyy · Ruins of Lordaeron to Scarlet Monastery, Grand Vestibule
The broken crown of Lordaeron lay open beneath a gray Tirisfal sky, its shattered arches holding more wind than shelter. Meho led them through the old stones in shield and mail, unhurried but watchful. Blaedy's robes whispered behind her. Arrowyy kept the rear with his bow loose in one hand, while the ruins gave way to the road running northeast.
Blaedy glanced toward the distant line of pines, where pale walls showed faintly beyond the branches. Her mouth thinned.
“Let's go pay those filthy Scarlet Crusaders a visit.”
Arrowyy's attention sharpened as Scarlet Monastery drew nearer. Its red roofs broke above the trees first, then its pale fortified stone and the banners stirring along its walls. The sight should have been simple enough: another enemy holdfast, another place with doors to force and defenders to put down. Instead, the approach churned with movement.
Armored Alliance figures crowded the entrance beneath their own colors. Steel flashed. Bodies pressed and broke apart around the road, while Scarlet red snapped overhead like fresh blood against the stone.
“It's a battlefield.”
A curse caught in Arrowyy's throat. He stared, first at the knot of fighters, then at the monastery looming behind them. Surprise gave way to a fierce, almost delighted grin. There was more life here than he had expected, and all of it armed. The Crusade had made a redoubt of the monastery; someone else had come to test its walls.
Meho halted at the edge of the turmoil. She raised her shield slightly, weight settling forward onto her leading foot as she judged the Alliance group.
“Do we attack?”
She began to angle toward them.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Arrowyy hurried up beside her, lowering the point of his bow so she would see he meant to stop, not challenge. “We're on a mission.”
For a breath, Meho remained poised to charge. Then she let the shield settle and turned away from the fighting ground toward the broken paths of the Whispering Gardens. Arrowyy followed before she could reconsider. Blaedy came after them without a word.
At the garden's edge, Varterilas stood amid the unsettled traffic around the approach. Meho lifted one mailed hand and gave her a brief wave as she passed. Then the three blood elves slipped onward, leaving the battlefield's clamor behind them.
The monastery entrance swallowed the wind and the daylight together. Torchlight burned in iron brackets, casting wavering gold over vaulted walls, severe religious statuary, and the scarlet-painted marks of the Crusade. Arrowyy entered with an arrow already nocked.
A Scarlet guard had been posted just within sight of the doors. The man saw them coming too late. Arrowyy's shot struck his armor hard enough to throw him sideways; the guard clapped a hand to his shoulder and vanished through an inner passage before Meho could close the distance.
They pressed into the Grand Vestibule. It opened broad and high around them, more military redoubt than cloister, its pale stone made colder by red banners and hard torchlight. Arrowyy searched each archway as they crossed it, measuring corners and doors, listening for the scrape of boots that might come racing back toward them.
BlaedyWe should've taken on the Alliance! For the Horde!
Meho · Scarlet Monastery, Huntsman's Cloister
The outer arches gave the Scarlet line no room to breathe. Meho held the narrow paving between crypt stones, shield taking the first hard blows while Arrowyy’s arrows hissed past her shoulders. Blaedy’s magic found every gap in Meho’s guard before pain could properly take hold. Seven gallants in crimson tabards pressed into that killing ground and vanished from it.
Two red-coated men who had lingered behind the line saw it break. They backed through the gate at the far end of the walk, then turned and ran before Meho could force a path to them. One more gallant tried to cover their retreat from beside a crypt door. Meho met him squarely and drove him down.
Fresh movement crowded the passage: two gallants at the front, a beastmaster urging them on, and a tracking hound skimming low toward Meho’s greaves. She caught the hound on her shield rim and shoved it aside. Steel rang, boots scraped on old stone, and the tight knot of Scarlets broke beneath the party’s pressure.
For a moment the graveyard wing held only echoes—the distant clatter of armed feet, the rattle of harness somewhere deeper in the monastery. Friendly, Arrowyy’s great bat, clung beneath an arch with its wings folded close.
“I wish we’d killed those men,” Arrowyy said.
Meho watched the empty gate where the two Scarlets had fled. “They’re gone. Watch ahead.”
She led them beneath the next arch and into Huntsman’s Cloister. Its stone arcades hemmed them in on one side, crypt walls on the other. There was nowhere to yield without giving an enemy a straight road to Blaedy.
The road filled quickly. Five gallants advanced with two beastmasters behind them, while six tracking hounds strained and snapped at the length of their leashes. Meho planted herself in the middle of the passage.
“Stay off the wall,” she told Blaedy.
The beastmasters loosed the hounds.
They came as a snarling rush of claws and yellow teeth. One struck Meho’s knee; another twisted past her shield toward Blaedy; a third leaped high enough that its breath gusted hot through Meho’s helm. She turned, slammed her shield into its chest, and took a blade across the shoulder as she did.
Blaedy · Scarlet Monastery, Athenaeum
The rush beyond Loksey’s cloister spent itself in another tangle of Scarlet gallants and an adept. From there the three entered the Gallery of Treasures, where chaplains, monks, and a diviner repeatedly tried and failed to halt them. The gallery yielded its defenders in steady measure, until the route toward the Athenaeum stood clear. Whatever the Crusade stored among its books, it had put stern hands at the door.
Meho crossed the Athenaeum’s threshold first, shield raised beneath rows of shelves that climbed into the candle-dark. Blaedy followed through the bitter smell of old leather and dust, with Arrowyy and Friendly sweeping in behind her. Scarlet robes flashed between the stacks. Meho met the first rush head-on while Blaedy kept her hands moving, drawing warmth over the paladin’s battered armor as chaplains, monks, and a diviner pressed them among fallen books and overturned stools. When the last of that knot went down, the library seemed to breathe dust around them.
Arrowyy turned slowly beneath the towering shelves, his face lit by the wavering candles. “Look at all these books.”
Blaedy glanced at a shelf full of cracked spines and curled parchment. Before she could decide whether any of it had been worth preserving, Arrowyy added, “I wish I could read.”
The next defenders gave them no chance to linger. Monks came fast from the aisles, chaplains behind them with hard voices and raised hands. Meho drove a path through the narrow spaces; Friendly’s broad wings beat dust from the floor as Arrowyy loosed arrows past Blaedy’s shoulder. Blaedy stayed close enough to keep Meho standing, retreating when the press crowded her and advancing when it broke. By the time the last scarlet-clad bodies lay still, the hush had returned, deeper than before.
Beyond the stacks waited a severe study chamber, its stone walls marked by candle smoke and the pale glimmer of stored arcane power. A long desk stood amid scattered papers and open books. Arcanist Doan waited behind it, robed and still, as though the noise of the fighting had merely interrupted his reading.
Blaedy felt the prickle of magic against her skin before anyone moved. There was room here—more than in the aisles—and she edged away from Meho’s shoulder, leaving the paladin open ground to work in. Arrowyy and Friendly spread toward one side of the chamber. Doan’s eyes settled on them with a scholar’s cold irritation.
Meho · Scarlet Monastery, Chapel Gardens
With the Athenaeum behind them, Meho, Blaedy, and Arrowyy retraced their passage through the Gallery of Treasures and Huntsman’s Cloister to the Grand Vestibule. They crossed out from the monastery only briefly, then turned back inside together. The figures who had been near the entrance were gone, leaving the way clear for the company’s next advance.
Meho passed beneath the monastery wall and into Chapel Gardens first, shield raised against a court of hard stone and harder symmetry. Graves stood between clipped hedges; Scarlet banners hung red and motionless above the paths. The place smelled of old earth, lamp oil, and mail warmed by bodies.
Blaedy came in at her left a breath later, robes whispering over the paving. Arrowyy followed with Friendly, the giant bat’s wings folding and opening in nervous, leathery beats. Meho spared one thought for the Alliance soldiers they had left at the entrance. Mercy, perhaps. Or a chance discarded. The question had barely formed before a Scarlet patrol wheeled toward them, weapons coming up.
Meho met the myrmidon’s charge head-on. Steel crashed against her shield and jarred her arm to the shoulder. She shoved him aside, caught the sorcerer’s first flare against the bright ward gathering over her armor, and drove forward before either man could reclaim the path. Blaedy’s magic closed the sting where a blade had slipped beneath Meho’s guard. Behind them, Friendly swept low, and Arrowyy’s shots snapped through the courtyard.
The two Scarlets went down amid the churn of feet and steel. Arrowyy lowered his bow only long enough to glance beyond them.
“All right.”
He was already moving when he added, “We’re on a schedule.”
Meho did not answer. She set the pace, cutting across the nearest path before the defenders could organize. A shield-bearing Scarlet tried to bar the way while myrmidons closed around her in a knot of swords. She gave ground only where it made them bunch together, then turned into them with Blaedy’s steady power at her back. Their line buckled. More defenders rushed in from beside the graves; a sorcerer and a wizard threw pale, burning force over their shoulders. Arrowyy’s arrows found gaps in red tabards, Friendly harried the flank, and the garden’s ordered paths became a crush of fallen banners and retreating boots.
Meho · Scarlet Monastery, Chapel Gardens
The Chapel Gardens gave ground a few bloodstained paces at a time. Meho held the narrow paths while Blaedy’s healing kept the bite of steel from settling in her bones and Arrowyy’s shots cracked past her shoulders. A wizard, myrmidon, and centurion went down amid trampled flowers; then two more wizards and a sorcerer. Even a rabbit that sprang wildly through the melee was caught in the ruin of it. One centurion after another pressed them on the path beyond, until four had fallen and the way to the chapel stood open.
Blaedy suddenly broke into a charge, pale hair streaming behind her as she ran for the broad doors. “Get them!”
Meho drove after her, shield forward. The Scarlet guards wheeled at the threshold, red tabards flashing in the dusk beneath the monastery walls. She struck the edge of her shield with her gauntlet and gave a sharp, ridiculous toot. Arrowyy laughed from somewhere behind Friendly’s beating wings.
“This is Meho’s house!” he shouted. An arrow took a crusader high in the chest and sent him staggering back through the doors. “Get out of here, Scarlet Crusade!”
They carried the fight into Crusader’s Chapel. Blaedy came in at Meho’s left, already casting, while Arrowyy and his giant bat crossed the threshold on the right. The chapel swallowed them in stale incense, shadow, and the hard echo of boots over stone.
The first defenders met them in a knot of white-and-red vestments. Abbots raised their hands to ward their fellows; wizards flung bright, searing magic over the heads of a chaplain and the men around him. Meho shoved into their center before their line could settle. Arrowyy made a strangled, furious noise as hostile magic scorched close, but his arrows kept coming. When the smoke thinned, the pair of abbots, the wizards, and the chaplain lay still among the overturned benches.
More Scarlets surged from the chapel’s depths before Meho could draw a full breath. Three abbots crowded behind a chaplain, blessing a wall of centurions; their cries mingled with the sharper chants of monks and the heavy rush of champions in mail. Meho planted herself in the crush. A champion’s weapon jarred her shield arm numb. Blaedy’s spellwork poured over her in warm flashes, closing what the next blow opened, while Arrowyy fired through every gap Meho made.
Meho · Scarlet Monastery, Crusader's Chapel
The last chapel guard came apart beneath Meho’s advance. Monks darted at the edges of her shield; champions crowded them with heavy blades, while a chaplain and wizard cast from beyond the press. Arrowyy’s shafts snapped through the candle smoke wherever Meho opened a gap, and Friendly’s enormous wings churned the incense-thick air overhead. A centurion made a stubborn stand in the nave, only for the remaining monk and champions to be swallowed in the same knot of steel, pale magic, and flying arrows.
Then the chapel opened before them.
Meho lowered her shield a finger’s breadth and faced the altar. Scarlet draperies hung unmoving from the vaulted stone. Rank upon rank of candles painted wavering gold over Scarlet Commander Mograine’s armor and High Inquisitor Whitemane’s white-and-scarlet vestments. Mograine stood ready with his great blade in both hands. Whitemane watched Meho as though the fallen defenders had merely interrupted a sermon.
“Left!” Arrowyy called.
Mograine’s blade descended from that side. Meho caught it on her shield, and the blow drove pain up through her arm. Blaedy’s healing warmth closed around the ache before it could root itself. Meho shoved back, holding the commander before her while Arrowyy and Friendly worried at him from the open floor.
Whitemane lifted one hand.
“Kneel,” she said.
White force clamped around Meho’s limbs. Her knees bent despite her, armor grinding against armor, but Mograine’s next step brought him too close. The pressure loosened as Meho lunged into it. Her shield struck Whitemane’s guard and forced the priestess back against the altar steps.
Meho caught Whitemane by the front of her vestments and leaned close enough to smell candle wax and sharp incense on her. Then she dragged her tongue in one clean, insolent stroke along High Inquisitor Whitemane’s cheek.
The priestess recoiled. Meho rammed her shield forward again. Whitemane struck the steps hard and folded there, one hand braced on the stone, her spell broken. For a heartbeat, Meho thought that was enough.
Mograine punished the thought at once. His blade crashed against her shield and drove her away from the altar. Behind him, Whitemane stirred. She rose in a sweep of white robes, face rigid with fury, and light spilled from her hands into the commander’s battered form. Rent mail knit beneath the radiance. His stance hardened.
Blaedy · Scarlet Monastery, Chapel Gardens
Chapel Gardens opened around them in a cramped square of cold air and clipped hedges, its tombstones crowded beneath the high monastery walls. Torchlight burned in the sconces along the cloister walks, catching on Scarlet insignia and on the dark metal of Meho’s newly changed weapon: the Shadowrend Longblade hung at her side like a strip of night. Arrowyy came in behind Blaedy with an eager bounce to his step, his excitement plain even before he said a word.
Blaedy looked from the graves to her companions and decided the bleak little garden needed a different purpose. She set herself behind the broad top of a tombstone, folded her hands with solemn shopkeeper dignity, and announced, “Time to make camp.” A moment later she leaned forward over her imaginary counter. “What can I get for you today?”
“We only have...” she began.
“I want a kebab,” Arrowyy said at once.
“Spice bread.”
Meho had approached the counter in the rattling, borrowed shape the Noggenfogger had given her: a skeleton in armor, longblade at its side. Blaedy gave her a regretful tilt of the head. “Sorry, only bread.”
When no kebab appeared, Arrowyy’s face crumpled theatrically and he let out a mournful cry. Blaedy refused to break character. She brought out flour and spice, worked the dough beneath the watchful stone faces of the graves, and soon had ten warm rounds of spice bread ready. Meho stared at the offering.
“Why the fuck did you ask what I wanted, then?”
“My manager said to.”
“Let me speak to them.”
“I haven’t paid yet, but I want a refund,” Arrowyy put in.
“She’s on break,” Blaedy said.
“That’s the problem.” Meho’s skull turned toward her. “Your manager’s a woman.”
Blaedy’s brows rose.
“A man should be running this business.”
Arrowyy laughed hard enough to bend at the waist. Blaedy passed three pieces of bread across the tombstone to Meho, then held herself still beneath the skeleton’s empty stare.
“Come on,” Meho said. “You know I’m right.”
“Here’s your bread, ma’am.” Blaedy placed the last piece squarely in Meho’s bony hand.
Meho turned to Arrowyy as though calling a witness before a tribunal. “What say you, Arrowyy?”
They passed through the vestibule and into another stretch of the monastery, then checked their movement near the entrance hall again. Arrowyy looked toward the passage where the wounded guard had disappeared.
“That guard got inside.” He kept his voice low. “I shot him before we went in.”
Blaedy's eyes flicked to the corridor, then back to him. “Keep your bow ready.”
She drew a stoppered crystal flask from her pack and pressed it into his hand. Cool water shifted inside, clear enough to catch the torchlight. Arrowyy drank, grateful for the sharp cold cutting through the dust in his mouth.
“Thanks.”
He lowered the flask and looked across the monastery's tall, hostile splendor. Somewhere beyond those arches lay rooms, stores, perhaps an armory. For the moment, no Scarlet had driven them back out into the gardens.
“Welcome home, everyone.”
Meho's armor gave a soft clink as she shifted her shield. Blaedy's mouth twitched while she opened her pack again. Arrowyy peered down a side passage as though he expected to find a door waiting with his name carved over it.
“I can't wait to pick my room.”
Blaedy passed Meho three tied bundles of crystal flasks, then gave Arrowyy two more bundles and a smaller one besides. He secured them against his gear, feeling their welcome weight settle there. Around them, the torchlight flickered over pale stone and Scarlet banners, and Arrowyy kept one ear turned toward the corridors ahead.
“Left,” Blaedy called.
Warm magic closed over the cut before Meho could feel its full sting. Blaedy had her back against the crypt stones, hands raised, keeping Meho upright beneath the crush. Arrowyy fired through openings that lasted no longer than a breath. Friendly swooped low through the archway, broad wings stirring dust and loose strands of hair as it harried the pack from above.
Meho could no longer count the bodies pressing her. A gallant hacked at her shield. A hound scraped over her vambrace, seeking her throat. She drove forward until the animals tangled with their own handlers and the red-coated men lost the space they needed for their swords.
Then a sharp command cut through the yelping.
Houndmaster Loksey emerged from the far arcade with the remaining hounds surging around his boots. Scarlet finery stretched over his broad frame; a heavy weapon hung ready in his hand. He sent the dogs at Meho’s flanks and came in behind them, trying to batter a path through her before she could recover her footing.
“Behind me,” Meho said.
Loksey’s first blow jarred her arm to the shoulder. His next forced her half a step back, and a hound lunged into the space he made. Meho caught teeth against her bracer, wrenched free, and struck the beast away before turning her shield into Loksey’s advance. Arrowyy’s shafts flashed by whenever the houndmaster shifted clear of Meho’s bulk. Blaedy’s steady spellwork held against the scratches, bites, and punishing impacts that came too fast to separate.
The last of Loksey’s hounds skidded across the stones as Meho drove its master back through the broken leashes. Loksey tried once more to turn her aside toward Blaedy. Meho refused the angle, kept her shield between him and the others, and pressed him until his attack lost its force. A final clash rang beneath the arches. Houndmaster Loksey fell amid the bodies of his dogs.
The quiet after him lasted only a heartbeat. A beastmaster burst from a side recess, weapon raised. Meho pivoted into the attack; Arrowyy’s bowstring snapped behind her. The man’s charge failed before it found any of them.
At Loksey’s side, Meho found a pair of heavy leather gloves, reinforced across the palms and fingers where leashes would bite and pull. She claimed the Dog Training Gloves, weighing their sturdy make in her hands before securing them away.
A lone gallant came running from the next arch. He saw Loksey on the ground and faltered. Meho met him with her shield before he could turn; Arrowyy’s next shot drove the man back, and he went down on the cloister stones.
They moved on carefully. Friendly settled briefly on a projecting bit of stone above Arrowyy, then lifted again as they passed beneath it. Farther down the passage, something shifted in the darkness between two crypt doors.
Arrowyy jerked his bow toward it. His arrow slipped from his fingers and struck an iron bracket with a sharp crack that raced along the cloister.
He froze. Color rose in his face as he glanced at Meho, then he made a small, pained gesture with his free hand and reset the arrow to his string.
Meho raised her shield toward the sound. “Ready.”
Scarlet steel answered from ahead. A gallant rushed the bend, and Meho caught him before he could reach the others. Three more crowded in behind him from between the crypts, but the narrow passage worked against them now. Arrowyy’s arrows found the gaps; Blaedy’s magic kept Meho firm at the front. The knot of defenders broke, and one final gallant tried to hold the far end alone. When he fell, the way forward lay open beneath the grim arches.
Blaedy lifted her chin. “Hello, Mr. Doan.”
Then she threw her voice across the chamber. “Give us your robes!”
Meho stepped forward and bowed deeply to the arcanist, one hand held across her breastplate in grave courtesy. The gesture lasted scarcely a breath. Doan answered with a violent flare of arcane light.
Blaedy recoiled from the glare as it burst across the flagstones. Heat snapped at her face. Meho was already moving, turning the force of the attack away from the others, while Arrowyy’s arrows hissed through the sudden smoke. Blaedy reached for Meho with a healing prayer, then another as sharp blue fire tore through the chamber. She kept her distance, watching the paladin’s footing, watching Doan’s hands, watching for the next ruinous flash.
The arcanist’s magic swelled once more, bright enough to bleach the chamber white. Blaedy braced herself behind a stone pillar. When the light guttered out, Doan sagged amid the wreck of his study and fell.
Arrowyy lowered his bow. “You should’ve given us the robes, Mr. Doan!”
The silence afterward rang in Blaedy’s ears. Meho went to the fallen arcanist and lifted an Illusionary Rod from among his things, its surface catching candlelight with an unreal sheen. A moment later Blaedy found the Mantle of Doan and drew its fine cloth free, the shoulders worked with the subdued elegance of a man who had expected to outlive every challenger.
Meho looked between them, rod in hand. “My apologies.”
Blaedy clutched the mantle to herself and rubbed at dry eyes, arranging her face into a mournful mask. Arrowyy caught her cue at once. He covered his face with one hand and bent over in mock grief, his shoulders shaking.
“Blaedy’s mother wanted her to have that staff,” he said, thickening his voice with pretended sorrow.
Blaedy pressed a hand to her heart and leaned into the act. “It was her dying wish!”
Meho held still for a moment, rod gleaming in her hand. Then she gave in to the performance, dropping to her knees on the cold flagstones and extending the rod before her in exaggerated contrition. Her bowed head and lowered shoulders made a silent plea to them both for forgiveness.
Blaedy let the silence stretch until it had become properly painful. Then she wiped at her eyes with the edge of Doan’s mantle. “I forgive you.”
By the time Meho forced the last myrmidon from the bend, breath rasped hot in her throat. She saw a wizard farther up the court lift both hands, shaping something bright and vicious between them.
Meho ran at him.
The spell struck her shield with a crack that flashed white behind her eyes. A second blast grazed past her helm. The wizard fell before he could loose another, but his allies came on at once—a myrmidon hacking for her exposed side, then more red sleeves and raised blades spilling around the grave markers.
“Damn it,” Arrowyy cursed under his breath as something burst against the stones near him.
Meho planted herself between that violence and the others. Every enemy who looked past her toward Blaedy or Arrowyy earned the rim of her shield, the bite of her weapon, or the hard pull of her presence. Blaedy did not retreat. Her healing held Meho upright through the battering, sealing one hurt as another opened, keeping the forward rush from collapsing into a desperate stand.
A myrmidon fell away. Then the press broke in jagged pieces: sorcerer, wizard, and myrmidon driven down amid one another; two more myrmidons cut from the breach; another who had tried to circle behind a tomb; finally a defender whose heavy shield struck the paving beside him. Meho was breathing through her teeth when the immediate danger gave way.
They cleared the next bend without ceremony. A wizard tried to hold the path with a defender at his side, but the pair could not stop the three of them. Later, one more defender stood alone beneath a banner and discovered too late that the garden had stopped protecting anyone.
For a few heartbeats, there was only the ring of settling mail and the scrape of Friendly’s claws on stone. Meho looked over the austere court: graves crowded by bootprints, hedges torn through, banners stained and swaying now in the disturbed air. Their pace had a cost written across the paths.
Mercy only mattered when there was room to give it. Arrowyy’s urgency had left no room at all.
Blaedy’s gaze traveled over Meho’s battered armor. “Still standing?”
“Still moving,” Meho said, and chose the next advance with a lift of her shield.
The answer came from deeper in the gardens. Two centurions marched out with defenders braced beside them, while sorcerers and a wizard spread behind the armored front. Their discipline made a wall of red steel across the chapel approach.
Meho struck that wall before it could close. A centurion’s blow rang through her shield; another came in from the side, forcing her to turn beneath the hiss of sorcery. Blaedy’s power poured into her whenever the coordinated assault found a seam. Arrowyy fired from behind her shoulder, calm and relentless, while Friendly wheeled through the crush to drive Scarlets from their footing.
Meho held the center. She let the centurions spend their strength against her guard, denied the defenders any clean push, and kept the casters’ attention pinned to the chaos in front of them. The melee surged around graves and shattered neatly trimmed borders until the sorcerers’ fire guttered out, the wizard vanished beneath the struggle, and the red line failed all at once. When it did, two centurions, two defenders, two myrmidons, and the spellcasters lay among the torn garden stones.
Quiet returned in a thin, unreal layer. Meho heard her own breath, the ringing in her mail, and grit shifting beneath her boots. The chapel approach was nearly open. Blaedy took her place behind and left of Meho again; Arrowyy nocked another arrow; Friendly crouched beside him. No one said they needed haste. They moved in it.
The last cluster struck with the desperation of men guarding the final stretch. A centurion led them, with a sorcerer and wizard behind. Meho crashed into the front rank as magic tore bright scars across the air. In the frantic churn, a rabbit bolted from beneath a hedge, flashed between armored boots, and was caught in the ruin of the fight. Its small body lay absurdly still beside a shattered stone border.
Meho had no breath to spare for it. The centurion, sorcerer, and wizard were brought down in the same violent push, and a final centurion tried to hold the way alone. He could not.
Meho stepped over the broken line and looked ahead. Chapel Gardens lay secured behind them, its graves and banners receding at her back. The way onward demanded the same ruthless speed, and she drove into it.
The press broke and reformed around them, bodies and broken pews narrowing the aisle. Four monks and four chaplains tried to smother the party beneath holy fire. Three champions forced their way through with them, then more centurions, but their order dissolved under the stubborn advance of Meho’s shield. One last champion came hard down the aisle; Meho met him beneath the chapel’s soot-dark rafters, and afterward the sudden space around her felt almost unreal.
A further champion barred the way beyond the main hall. Past him, a monk and two wizards fought from the side passage, and a centurion tried to hold its mouth. They yielded ground through dust and splintered wood. Near the far masonry, the last monk crumpled beside a section of wall that looked no different from any other until Meho saw the thin dark seam worked into its stone.
Blaedy came up behind her, breathing hard. “What’s behind that wall, Mommy?”
Meho set her palm against the concealed join. Cold stone shifted under her hand. “We’ll find out.”
The hidden way admitted them one at a time. It was cramped beyond the wall, close with old air and lit by a weak, trembling glow. Meho stepped through first, shield raised, and found a lone man in priestly robes waiting in the dim chamber.
Blaedy drew in a sharp gasp.
High Inquisitor Fairbanks lifted both hands. Light gathered around him in a protective shimmer, then lashed outward at Meho in a hard white stroke. She took it on her shield and drove forward before he could finish another prayer. Blaedy’s magic flashed past her shoulder; Arrowyy’s arrow hissed through the narrow darkness. Fairbanks answered with a burst of restoring radiance, but the chamber gave him nowhere to retreat. The glow around him fractured, guttered, and went out as he fell.
Arrowyy tore another arrow free so sharply that the fletching buckled under his fingers. He set it to the string with a hard, angry movement and said nothing.
“Keep him on me,” Meho said, setting her boots against the altar’s lowest step.
Blaedy slipped nearer through the shifting reach of Mograine’s blade. Her expression softened with deliberate, almost courtly interest as she looked at Whitemane.
“You make severity look almost inviting, Inquisitor,” Blaedy said.
Arrowyy stared at Whitemane, then at the renewed strength in Mograine’s guard. “I thought we had her.”
Meho turned the commander’s next cut wide. “She was down. Not finished.”
Blaedy’s magic flashed past Meho’s shoulder. Arrowyy’s arrow followed it, swift and straight through the candlelight. Whitemane raised both hands again, perhaps to force them all to their knees, perhaps to mend Mograine once more; Meho could not spare her more than a glance. But the priestess’s prayer broke in her throat. She staggered against the altar, robes spilling around her, and High Inquisitor Whitemane fell without rising.
Mograine saw her fall. His answering roar was swallowed by the chapel’s stone vaulting as he came at Meho with a brutal, unmeasured stroke. She met it, twisted beneath the weight of his blade, and gave Arrowyy the narrow angle he needed.
“So we can’t bring her down before she heals?” Arrowyy asked.
“Not if we let her stand,” Meho said.
Mograine pressed forward, boots grinding wax into the flagstones. Blaedy’s spells burned pale against his armor; Friendly swept low enough that the commander had to wrench his attention aside. Meho drove into the opening with her shield. His guard failed. The great blade slipped from his hand and rang across the chapel floor.
Scarlet Commander Mograine fell beside it.
For a moment, Meho heard only their breathing and Friendly’s wings beating high beneath the vaults. Then Blaedy looked down at Whitemane’s still form. A thin tendril of drool escaped the corner of the priest’s mouth and traveled toward her chin.
Arrowyy saw it and laughed, sudden and sharp in the emptied sanctuary.
Blaedy wiped her mouth with the back of one hand, chin lifting as though she had intended the gesture. Meho turned toward the altar’s shadow before either of them could make her witness to more of it.
There, among the fallen commanders’ prizes, lay a weapon of solid, consecrated weight: the Hand of Righteousness. Meho wrapped her fingers around its grip and claimed it. Beside it rested the Gauntlets of Divinity, bright plates traced in careful gold. She took those too, testing their cool weight against her palms.
Arrowyy jerked backward with a wide-eyed start at the sight of the prizes in her hands.
“I don’t want it.”
Blaedy hesitated. Meho lowered her skull toward the spice bread, inspecting it with mounting offense.
“What has your bread done to me?”
“I’ll eat it, then.”
Arrowyy gasped at Meho. “I’m calling a health inspector,” Meho declared.
“Good thing I didn’t eat your skeleton bread,” Arrowyy said.
Blaedy drew in a sharp breath. Meho’s skeletal frame had gone oddly slack. “I don’t feel...” Meho said. Then, after a dreadful pause, “...so good.”
“You need to go to a hospital immediately.”
Meho threw herself down beside the tombstone and stayed motionless, bone striking stone. Blaedy’s shopkeeper smile vanished with it.
“Wait, I feel funny,” Arrowyy said.
He dropped beside Meho in an abrupt, immaculate imitation of death. Blaedy whirled on him. “You didn’t even eat here, sir!”
For a breath, she stood between Meho’s motionless skeleton form and Arrowyy’s suspiciously tidy collapse. Then something pale caught her eye where a hedge met the path. “Wait. I see some life-root.”
Arrowyy remained on the ground. “I’m still mad about the kebab.”
The garden settled into torchlit quiet. Blaedy crouched near the pale root without disturbing it, then looked back toward Meho’s still skeleton form as Friendly’s great bat wings stirred the air overhead.
“Friendly’s in heat,” Arrowyy said.
Friendly’s attention had fixed on Meho. Blaedy looked from the giant bat to the skeleton’s armored shape. “Well, the shape of it, I guess. He’s a male skeleton—why wouldn’t he be?”
She straightened and gently patted Friendly when the bat lowered close enough. Time passed beneath the cloister shadows. When Blaedy looked back again, Meho had risen from her act and was changing her gear with brisk, offended movements.
“Friendly thanks you. She wants to sit on your head, Blaedy,” Arrowyy said.
“No, she didn’t.”
Friendly descended anyway. The giant bat’s weight settled into Blaedy’s hair and across her shoulders, wing membrane brushing her temples. One damp wingtip dragged a cold streak through her hair. Blaedy threw up both hands. “No—she’s on my head!”
Meho stared, astonishment emptying even a skeleton’s fixed grin of its menace.
“Sorry, I don’t have a towel to wipe you off,” Arrowyy said.
Heat rushed into Blaedy’s face as she tried, unsuccessfully, to keep Friendly’s claws out of her hair.
Much later, Arrowyy strayed too close to a torch sconce. He shifted away from its heat and fanned himself. “I feel hot.” He gasped toward Meho. Meho answered with a low, amused sound.
Arrowyy gave the little bread counter, the graves, and Blaedy beneath Friendly’s wings a final wave.
Here I close my book for this portion of the road. The record supplies no further footfall, no fresh challenge, and no final accounting. That is enough. A chronicler need not tug a tale past its proper stopping place; it is wiser to leave a little space on the page for whatever comes after.
Meho0/5 review on yelp for the spice bread, will 100% kill you
BlaedySpice bread is really good though :(
