Dean fell to the ground, impacting the grass softly. His eyes widened as they fell on the source of the group's attention. There, hollowed into the side of an oppressive mountain, was a cracked and weathered door.

Dean paused, then exhaled, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he stood in front of the door, his hand hovering an inch from its gnarled surface.

He looked to the left and right, saying, "I'm opening the door; be cautious."

The door lacked any kind of knob, and didn't appear to have a hinge. Dean pressed his palm to its surface and pushed, gradually increasing his applied pressure. Eventually, the door popped inward. Dean caught himself before he stumbled forward, resting a hand on the rock above the unsealed entrance.

He used his chip reader to send out a projection of white light, illuminating the cavernous room. He stepped gingerly forward, the other vanguard members following in behind.

Dean felt a churning sense of reverence and fear as he took note of the room's contents. Stacked across each wall were pillars holding platforms, almost as though someone had constructed king-sized bunk beds from stone. As he neared the center of the room, he looked up, and noticed that across the ceiling stretched a cracked mural.

He looked at the two people behind him. "Maxime, Jeffrey, you've been recording?"

They nodded. "Yes," Jeffrey replied.

Dean nodded back. "Good. Make sure you get everything." Dean wasn't going to take any chances: for all he knew, once fresh air flowed into the room, everything might disintegrate into dust. Even a light brush up against the wall might prove ruinous.

With this in mind, Dean walked stealthily toward one of the room's walls, footfalls soft on the stone ground. As he neared the stacked, bed-like construct, Dean's eyebrows furrowed together. Lying on each of the stone beds was a humanoid-like form veiled in a diaphanous cloth.

I bet the covering will burst into dust if I so much as breath on it, Dean thought. He brought his chip reader up to his head, opening the "toolbox" application Fartuun had given him. He hadn't looked through everything it could do, but was pretty sure...

Dean gave the dark a small smile as he pulled up the x-ray scanner. He flashed the scanner above the covered body, moving his arm carefully into the bed-like enclosure. He breathed a sigh of relief as he recovered his hand.

He didn't want to see the body under the cloth.

While Dean had killed people in defense of Basalith, he'd been under the influence of Bath. However, he couldn't deny that it made the act...easier going forward. The first time he killed someone in cold blood had been on one of the expeditions where he led COTD members from Jerboaland west to rescue people from war zones. Dean shuddered as he remembered--not because of killing, but because of why.

---

Dean gave the signal to stop: he held his hand up in the air, fist closed. It was dark, the sun a dying ember on the horizon. He frowned when he realized that Grey was a hundred feet diagonally to his forward right. He knows he's supposed to follow behind...Dean shook his head. Grey was...useful, even if he didn't listen to instructions.

Barkhad was to his left, the young man's limbs coiled around Kisserin in a firm lock. The quasi-snake lifted her charcoal face to the town, her tongue flicking out.

Virigard tugged softly on Dean's hand. "Dean," she said, waiting for him to look down and give her eye contact.

"Viri?"

She sniffed. "I hear something."

Dean looked toward Grey. "Do you hear anything?" he asked, trusting his voice to carry far enough for Grey's hearing to pick it up. This seemed to get the man's attention: he zipped over in a matter of seconds.

"Do I hear anything?" Grey repeated. "Well, I hear bruises in bloom."

Dean stifled the need to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Viri," he said, "what do you hear?"

Her ears twitched. "Mm...sounds like someone's being hit. Out in public."

Dean took in a deep breath. "Okay, well, let's go in and take a look." They needed to pass in this direction, anyway.

After reaching the city's gates, they walked in at a human pace. It was already two months into the post-COTD era, such that nobody gave their party a second glance. The quasi-snake was nothing to worry about, especially considering that it had a human rider.

If the few locals out at this time had seen Virigard, they would have reacted far differently.

But they never do, Dean thought. Whatever people like Edgewood might say about her size--especially when he compared the jerboa to his armored raptors--it made her incredibly adept at staying hidden.

They walked through the central road of the small town, taking note of stalls clearing out on the side of the street where there must typically be a bazaar. Overall, the layout of the hamlet was familiar, practical.

What they found at the center of the town wasn't.

A woman was being stoned to death.

Dean and his small party stood still for a moment, transfixed by the scene. All but Grey, who murmured, "Garden of blue."

Dean couldn't even spare the energy to respond to the remark, steeling his attention on the scene in front of him. He gave Barkhad and Kisserin a look, then tapped Virigard lightly on her head.

She disappeared into the ground.

A moment later, the woman disappeared with her.

No matter what happens here, at least that woman is out of harm's way. He didn't care what the woman had done: she didn't deserve to be stoned. And based off of what he'd seen in this part of the world, he would be absolutely shocked if she deserved punishment in the first place.

He knew he might be projecting his own cultural norms and whatever--he'd at least learned that much in his few months of college. But with the more he saw...the less he cared.

He swallowed, hoping that it wasn't just power swelling his head. He didn't think so, but decided that he'd maybe talk to Lisa about it next time he saw her.

In a moment, Virigard appeared next to him. As she spoke, she was barely audible over the screaming crowd. The woman's disappearance had thrown the entire crowd of spectators into disarray.

"Dean," she said, her eyes round. "There's something really bad underground."

Dean swallowed. "What?" Even as the crowd pushed into him, he remained immovable. Virigard scurried up his leg and torso, electing to speak directly into his ear. Dean recoiled as Grey leaned his head in at the same moment, nearly kissing him on the cheek.

"There's a lot of people underground," she noted. "Lots of people. There's a place where they...take them."

"Oh? They place their unsanctimonious in a burial chamber?" Grey asked.

Virigard twitched her nose, her whiskers brushing over Dean's and Grey's faces. "More like a dumping ground."

Grey smiled, then stepped away, walking through the crowd. Dean couldn't help but stare as the crowd parted neatly around him. Dean shuddered, remembering what Lisa had told him about kursi. Even if their people-controlling powers made him feel...uncomfortable, he had to admit that having one on his side was far better than the alternative.

He walked over to Barkhad and Kisserin to relay Virigard's message. The jerboa lay tucked under his tabard and in his sweatshirt, her head poking out of the front pocket.

"Grey's going to do something," Kisserin sighed. "We should follow him."

"We still don't know what's going on here," Barkhad pointed out. "All we know is that people were stoning a woman. That's not why we came here."

"Why did we come, then?" Kisserin asked, her tongue flicking.

Dean frowned. "To evacuate people from war zones."

Barkhad smiled grimly. "This isn't a warzone; it's a public execution. We should move on. We've rescued that woman," he gave Virigard a tip of the head, "and we won't be able to accomplish much of anything else."

Dean wasn't sure. He recognized that Barkhad, having grown up in Somalia, would have a better sense of the cultural and societal quagmire in which the village was situated. He's probably right: we won't be able to change anything. And like Viri said, it sounds like this isn't something out of the ordinary.

He cleared his throat. "Let's find Grey first. Then we can decide what to do."

Virigard led them to Grey. As she thumped her feet against the ground, she used to vibrations to determine his location.

He was, of course, in the chamber that Virigard had mentioned previously.

He'd apparently gone down--and widened--the small rabbit hole that Virigard had used to rescue the woman.

"Viri, where did you put her, anyway?"

Virigard snuggled her head into his sweatshirt pocket. "I told her to stay put in a little pocket of air under the surface, at least until things quiet down. We can bring her with us, or we can leave her and she'll run away and save herself." She thumped her tail into Dean's waist. "It's good to have more than one option."

Dean agreed. While he'd prefer to bring the woman with him, if she didn't yet have any boons at all...Maybe we can have her wait for us until the return trip, he thought. Bring her to a nearby village, have her stay at an inn.

Dean's musings came to a stop as they joined Grey in the "burial chamber." Strewn throughout the room were corpses in various stages of decay. The smell was, undoubtedly, the worst that Dean had ever smelled...and he'd already scented the burning, bloody, bodily-fluid-saturated stench of battlefield--both on these kinds of rescue expeditions and in the battle of Basalith.

He stepped backward in disgust, but quickly recovered and started forward. As long as I breathe through my mouth, it isn't that bad. He joined Grey at the room's center. There, he saw the women in detail, illuminated by an overhead light.

His heart began to race, his pupils contracting in disgust. "Who could do something like this?" he breathed.

Grey kept his eyes fixed on the corpses. "People."

Dean's entire body was tense, his muscles clenching up. "They..." Dean looked at Virigard, who had hopped out of his pouch to get a look for herself. He couldn't get any more words out. It was just...so...

Dean felt as though his rage and disbelief were overflowing, as though they had surpassed whatever vessel had comfortably filled them before.

"Oh, someone had fun with them," Grey acknowledged. "Most of them were dead before the fun began, but not all." He walked over to a particularly disgusting corpse, poking it with his foot. "See the blood in her mouth? This one came down alive."

Dean felt his stomach sink. Her...mouth? Now that Grey directed his gaze to it, he couldn't look away. The girl's mouth was a rictus, her lips...missing? No, the black at their edges...

They'd been burned, Dean realized. Then he saw her teeth. Shattered, rotting yellow, like porcelain after a fall.

Grey smiled again, his eyes settling ominously over Dean's. Once more, Dean found his attention drawn to the kursi.

"Someone put a hot iron in her mouth," he explained. "Cracked her teeth, burned away her flesh."

Dean didn't want to hear anymore. It didn't matter--he couldn't think of anything worse than that. And he didn't want to know why Grey spoke with such certainty about the methods of torture.

Grey's smile remained unfazed. "Don't shy away from your anger, Knight," Grey said. "You're still so young, so full of passion. Would you like to meet the woman who did this?"

Dean blinked. The woman...?

Behind him, Barkhad snorted, "I want to meet her." His eyes were dark, face stoic.

"Knight?" Grey repeated.

Dean looked down at Virigard. She gave him a slow nod, her eyes wet.

Dean met Grey's eyes, then solemnly nodded. "Show me the person responsible."