They made it to Dai without any trouble, but the locals were worried. It seems that a Fei had been spotted in the forest surrounding the town. They were shown a painting of the Fei. It was a boar with a serpent’s tail and only one eye. It apparently brought draught and famine with it.

To everyone it was a bad omen. To Nikola, it was an opportunity. An army needed to eat. Xiongnu was the biggest nation there was. China couldn’t take it on in a fair fight. But if he captured the Fei and worked a ritual with it would weaken the empire of Xiongnu. Even if he only struck down Longcheng it would be great for the morale of the Chinese.

Together with the hunting party of the Emperor, Nikola and Wei Caihong went on a hunt for the Fei. How hard was it to spot such a weird boar? As it turns out it was almost impossible. On the sixth day of traipsing the countryside the hunters began to say that they were merely chasing a rumor.

Stopping at a village for the night Nikola went to the inn, ready to give up. Half of the things the Chinese spoke about didn’t actually exist. Maybe the Fei didn’t either? But Wei Caihong wasn’t ready to give up. With his superior speed from his vampirism curse and with no witnesses he took off in the woods in the night screaming how the harvest has come.

He happily bragged how his rice paddies were overflowing with rice and his fields were rich in barley. Just as he was going to start bragging about his fruit garden an angry snort came from behind a tree. Wei Caihong grinned. He knew for a fact that most supernatural creatures were capable of understanding human speech and were very jealous.

Wei Caihong stepped in the direction of the sound, describing the apples he got from his fruit garden, and he saw it. An ugly, deformed and starved boar with a snake’s tail and a single eye. He lunged at the boar, aiming for it’s neck, but it jumped to the side and took off.

The vampire gave chase. The boar wasn’t as fast as a normal boar and so Wei Caihong kept up and made a grab for the beast every so often. The snake’s tail had a sharp, boney, edge and the boar used it to try and injure Wei Caihong. But the noble was having none of it, jumping to the side.

Then all of a sudden the boar fell from up high and Wei Caihong barely stopped himself from falling down too. It was a nasty drop. The boar screamed as it fell and then a nasty splat was heard and then silence. Wei Caihong cursed, for now the boar was surely mincemeat. Still, he began to climb down. He would get as much of the beast back to Nikola. Otherwise the hunt would be for nothing.

As he reached the bottom something was off. The body of the boar lay down on the ground and it was whole. Wei Caihong reached it and took it. It barely weighted anything. Something wet dripped from the boar and on the ground, but Wei Caihong didn’t see it and so he began to climb back up.

At sunrise Wei Caihong made it back into the inn with his prize. On the way more of the liquid had dripped from the boar. It’s tail, actually. As Wei Caihong placed the boar on the table a villager burst in and began to wail.

“My rice paddy! My rice paddy! It turned into a swamp. All the rice is lost.” Many villagers began to rush towards their own land to see if this fate had befallen their own crops. They came wailing back in the village. All the crops on the way that Wei Caihong had chosen for his return trip had failed. Finally, the noble saw the oozing snake’s tail but it was too late. The pestilence was spreading.

“We have to fix this.” Said Nikola as he tried to come up with something to stop the poison of the Fei.

“How? The Fei always brings famine. But I didn’t know it would bring it by dying.” Said Wei Caihong, disbarring that his actions had led to such a thing.

“We can use the Fei for a counter ritual. But I have never tried to stop a famine before. I can fix up the soil of the land but I can’t do anything for the failed crops. And the worse thing is that the pestilence is spreading.” Said Nikola. Serves him right for trying to bring famine to Xiongnu. Such things were uncontrollable.

“We have to stop the spread.” Said Wei Caihong, ready to carve up the boar and eat it raw if he needed to. He took out a knife, but Nikola stopped him.

“I don’t know anything about this animal. What if it makes us gluttonous? We have to test it on something else. A dog, perhaps?”

Wei Caihong breathed a sigh of relief when Nikola hadn’t said a human. They looked for a dog, but when they threw it some meat from the boar the animal refused to eat. Whimpering and running away before they could force the meat down it’s maw.

Left with a chunk of decaying meat between them and a dead boar on the table the two stared at each other. Then Nikola brought the meat to his mouth.

“You said yourself that you don’t know what will happen!” Snapped Wei Caihong, hand shooting up to hold Nikola’s and stop it.

“A little pain would surely help the ritual along.” Said Nikola, smiling. Then with a burst of magic he shoved the meat in his mouth and gulped it down without chewing. He coughed a few times. Hitting his chest with his fist to force the meat down. Then he waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. His stomach felt as if he has not eaten in days. With gusto he cut off more of the disgusting meat and began eating. Soon, only the bones of the boar remained and he even snapped them to get at the marrow. But even then Nikola was still hungry.

Dish after dish was brought to him and he kept eating as if he was starving. Wei Caihong looked at him with worry. Nikola didn’t seem to be stopping and when Wei Caihong had tried to get the latest plate away Nikola snapped at him. This was a food addiction. Azazel had long since told Wei Caihong how he cleared Nikola from Wei Caihong’s blood. Just in case they needed to do it again.

Placing his two fingers together Wei Caihong touched Nikola’s brow and forced magic through them. Nikola finally stopped eating and he clutched his stomach. He didn’t seem to want to barf but it was close thing. As Nikola huffed he felt like he was overflowing with magic. He whispered the incantation for rain and relaxed in his chair.

“I can finally feel the magic of the boar. I am using it to wash away whatever it used to taint the soil. But these people are going to starve come winter.” Said Nikola with regret. It was true that some villager was going to kill the Fei eventually in order to prevent a famine and one would have taken place anyway. But he had wanted to use this monster against Xiongnu and had speeded things along.

“The new ships are done. We can ship food from Gangcho to here. Free of charge.” Said Wei Caihong, feeling equally guilty.

“And scream to the populace that we are responsible?” Asked Nikola. But the idea had merit. He didn’t want to profit off these people, especially since he was the one responsible for their misfortune. But he couldn’t leave them to fend for themselves either. “We will lower the cost of our food for everyone. But we will ship most of it here. The farmers back home won’t be happy.”

“We can tell them it is to support the war effort.” Said Wei Caihong and Nikola nodded. Yes, this could work. They scrubbed the Fei’s blood from the table the boar had been on with saltwater and left the inn. By the time they made it back to the Emperor the news that the crops around Dai were felled spread and they were both faced with an angry Emperor.

“Are you on Xiongnu’s side or mine?” Screamed Emperor Han at the two of them. Next to him Han Guo looked uncomfortable. His father had even spoked about braking off the agreement between him and Wei Lihua. So angry he was.

“We miscalculated. But we have a plan. We can create dragons and we can let them loose in Xiongnu to…”

“And when the beasts come back to my China and begin to burn my cities?” Raged the Emperor and Nikola bowed his head.

“I will accept any punishment you deem fit.” Nikola had kept Wei Caihong’s involvement in this incident out of his report to the Emperor. Wei Caihong tried to fix this but Nikola sent him a pleading look and he remained silent.

“You will pay for the damage in full!” Said the Emperor. “From your own savings. You are lucky the village was so small and had so little land. My ministers say that the missed harvest will cost a thousand golden coins.”

Nikola nodded. He made this much for a single week in his shop, Gangcho now being visited from far and wide so people could get jewelry and weapons made by him.

“And you will make sure the people are fed!” Said the Emperor, calming down slightly when he saw another nod and that Nikola’s bowed head had still not risen.

“And you will still create a famine in Xiongnu. But one that will not be felt here!” Finished the Emperor. He did like the idea in general, but it’s failed execution had nearly made him take back all the boons he had given the Wei family.

“I will need fifty sacrifices.” Said Nikola, not missing a beat. Xiongnu was vast, the biggest Empire there was. He had done this only a couple of times before but the number of sacrifices had to be about one for every million of the populace of the country he was cursing.

The Emperor pales at the number but he brought a servant forward and had him begin writing a letter to the magistrate of Dai.

“Let it be known that magistrate Nikola of Gangcho is hereby given leave to execute fifty prisoners any way he deems fit. Privately.” He finished the letter and took it off the servant’s hand and handed it to Nikola.

“Go to the dungeon and do your bloody work, brother.”

Han Guo was happy his father was calling Nikola of Troy a brother again. It meant that his marriage with his fairy was still happening.

Wei Caihong went with Nikola to the dungeon and grabbed his sleeve when he began to choose who the sacrifices would be.

“How are they going to die?” He asked, dreading the answer.

“One will survive, the rest will be cut up and cooked up for him to eat. He will eat all the meat and then he would be told. Depending on how long he chooses to live after he learns the truth of what he was eating the famine will continue. If he chooses to live with the guild for a year then the famine will continue for a year. That is why we need the toughest bastard in here.”

“And why can’t you do it then? I don’t see you succumbing to guilt.” Asked Wei Caihong and Nikola smiled bitterly at him.

“I did that, once. An African tribe angered me. It was quite big. Now it’s territory is known as the Sahara Desert.”

Wei Caihong had heard about the seemingly endless stretch of land and he paled. No, it would be better if they kept someone alive forcefully for a couple of years. The alternative was too cruel.