Raksha watched Aisa’s slender form spring away, the hem of her long, gray skirt flapping with every skipping step and the blue scarf about her neck trailing behind her. She reached her father, a bearded, middle-aged man clad in work clothes, and took his hands in hers. He smiled and nodded as she began chattering.

All around him, hundreds of serfs had begun to escalate their merriment. They’d been chatting and eating moments ago, but now, they broke out skins of wine and bottles of spirits and began passing them around. Small groups started their own, much inferior, renditions of Aisa’s song, to the accompaniment of wooden flutes and various stringed instruments.

Stretching, Raksha wondered if he could find the pie peddler again. He wouldn’t mind another pastry. In the distance, Aisa caught his eye. She gave him a very pretty smile, waved at him, and walked into the crowd with her father.

His view of her departure was suddenly cut off by a robed and hooded figure. It stood before him, light from a dozen nearby campfires dancing its shadow across his face.

“You’re Raksha,” the newcomer said, producing something from the depths of his robes and thrusting it forth.

It was a small wooden cross with tips of embossed pewter, the mark of a Hegemonic priest.

“How can I help you, Father…” Raksha began.

“Ignatius. I am Ignatius, brother-flagellant of the 117th tertiary diocese of this province,” the priest said. “Come with me. Now. We must speak.”

Raksha sighed as he climbed to his feet. The priest stank of stale sweat and dirt, and he was already proving to be much poorer company than Aisa, but it was never a good idea to anger a man of the Church.

“Lead the way, Father Ignatius.”

The priest spun on his heel and began stalking through the crowd. He shoved aside serfs who didn’t make way for him quickly enough, sending more than a few tumbling off their feet. They protested but returned swiftly to their merriment, likely because of the sight of Raksha, with his belted sword, close on the priest’s heels.

Ignatius led him away from the crowd and beyond the forest’s treeline, to a small clearing. The sun had fully set, by then, but the skies were clear, and everything was bathed in the cold light of the rising moon.

The priest turned to him and pulled his hood back. Ignatius’s scalp was tonsured, in the fashion of a friar, so that the top of his head was exposed to the heavens. But tattooed words covered the bare skin of his skull. Similar writing crept down his leathery cheeks and the sides of his neck.

“Holy Scripture, for it is glorious to bear the word of God on my flesh, that the weak and unworthy might behold and repent,” Ignatius said, obviously aware that Raksha was staring at him.

“I… I see.”

“I know of you, Raksha, apprentice of Shura the Destroyer,” the priest continued. “You saved the good-folk of Brother Francis’s diocese from the schemes of foul heretics and unholy spirits.”

“Oh, that. Well, happy to help.” Raksha shrugged.

“That was a pious act, Raksha. Have no doubt that the Church is grateful, but I call upon you in God’s name once more.”

“What do you need, Father?”

“This gathering here.” Ignatius pointed in the direction of the forest, where small campfires could be seen and the faint sounds of music floated into the air. “What do you make of it?”

“Song, dance, food. Seems like a good time.”

“Wrong. It is sin, right from the start, for virtue lies in toil, and merriment opens the path to debauchery and death.”

“Whatever you say, Father.”

“But that is not all,” Ignatius hissed. “Degeneracy is present, of the foulest kind, the kind that needs to be purged with fire and steel!”

“Wait, Father. Relax.” Raksha held up his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture to the priest, who’d begun shaking with rage. “These people are just eating, drinking, and having fun. There’s no need for anybody to get hurt.”

“Listen, Raksha, and think!” Ignatius began pacing back and forth. “Hundreds of serfs abandoned their villages, their livelihoods, and made their way here. And for what? To listen to some mere slip of a girl sing some heathen tune? Does that sound right to you?”

“I didn’t know that first part, and no, no, it doesn’t,” Raksha admitted. Hegemonic authorities were very strict about tithes and taxes, and lapses in productivity by villages could be, and regularly were, punished by mass cullings. Serfs would not dare leave their work on their own accord.

“There is foul sorcery at play here, I have no doubt.” Ignatius opened his robe, revealing stained bandages wrapped across his thin, grimy chest. “Two days ago, I rallied the soldiers of outpost 87 to prevent some serfs from leaving their village. Violence broke out, and we were forced to slaughter every single living soul in that village.”

“What?”

“The serfs grew maddened when I told them that they could not leave their work behind, that they had to toil for their lord and find solace in the virtue of labor.” Ignatius grunted as he closed his robe. “One of them speared a soldier in the throat with a pitchfork, and from there, blood began to flow. By the time we were done, there was only one soldier left alive. I have sent him to inform Antonius, Hegemonic Lord of this domain.”

“So that means more soldiers are coming.” Raksha clenched his fists. “Father, this could very well turn into a complete bloodbath. We can’t let that happen. We have to disperse this gathering, immediately.”

“Agreed,” Ignatius said, grinding his jaw. “We must—“

A displacement in the air, the wrong kind, slight and subtle, but it didn’t escape Raksha’s notice. He drew his sword, Steelbreaker, in one fluid motion, spun on his heel, and hacked the arrow streaking towards Ignatius out of the air.

The priest blinked and began fumbling in his robes.

Raksha raised his sword and drew deeply upon the Conflagration, his martial Path. Its aegis waxed, thickening across his limbs and torso and filling him with its strength. The scents floating in the night air became stronger. His vision became sharper. His reflexes grew fast enough for him to cut down yet another arrow aimed at Ignatius.

The projectile hit the dirt, embedding itself point-first. It was an old-fashioned shaft, fletched with feathers at the end. Raksha hadn’t seen such arrows very often.

“Very well done,” a man’s voice came from the shadows deepening alongside dusk around the clearing. “I thought the first was a fluke, but the second definitely wasn’t.”

“Show yourself,” Raksha demanded, taking a defensive posture in front of Ignatius.

“Step into the light, heretic!” the priest snarled. He now held a three-headed steel flail in one hand and a sword in the other. “Come forth, that I may visit God’s wrath on you.”

“Good evening, Father,” the unseen archer said. “Here’s a present for you, first.”

Something rolled from the darkness and came to a halt before them. It was a human head, forcibly ripped from a man’s shoulders, judging by the spinal fragments trailing from its ragged neck stump.

“The soldier I dispatched to bring word to Antonius,” Ignatius muttered. “We can expect no reinforcements, then.”

“Exactly, Father. No one will be coming to stop this. Not until it’s too late, anyway.”