Jess blinked in the sudden silence, awakening from darkest dream with her sword raised high, all her battle siblings favoring her with the strangest of stares.

Eloquin himself, blade smeared with brain and blood, favoring Jess with the tiny nod that meant everything.

"By the gods, did you see how fast she moved?"

"The shields ripped clean out of their hands! I've never seen such a thing."

“A sword shouldn't cut through armor like that... not just rawhide, it cleaved through steel!”

Jess felt a sudden chill, daring to gaze down at her sword. Seeing traces of sap along the edges, shimmering like dappled sunlight through leaves. She felt her lips curl up in a terrible smile, the howling fury of the ancient woodland roaring through her still.

Eloquin's gaze suddenly hardened. No one else dared say a word. "Well done, Squires. Our foe now begins to taste the bitter fruits of their folly. See that none of this scum lives to rue this day."

The bailey where the duke had thought to finish them off was now awash in bodies and gore, littered in cleaved heads gazing at horrors they alone could see. Still riding the wrath of this ancient forest so brutalized by man, Jess was as cold and hard as Eloquin himself when she caught sight of men trembling in horror, not death, hesitating not at all in finishing off the few surviving soldiers screaming for mercy with quick brutal blows as her band made its way to the keep proper.

Jess snarled as the door to the keep proper was slammed and bolted shut, glaring at the obstacle, in that moment sensing her allies as if they were but extensions of herself. Rowan safe by Eloquin's side, Malek and Mord once more flanking her, closest friend and sweetest nemesis ready to fight once more by her side.

Jess gazed intently at the door.

Remembered when it had first bloomed, centuries ago, caressed by the smoke-free winds of endless forests on all sides, growing ever greater in stature as centuries passed, wise and majestic in ways hot-blooded creatures could never understand.

And the agony of betrayal, accords broken, endless centuries of sagacious insight added with softest susurrations to every breeze enriching Erovering's lore, strengthening her ties to all that was strong and sure in ways few would ever understand was forever lost, a sacred guardian sent crashing to the ground, the bite of axe and saw, branches and limbs cleaved free and used like bones upon this framework of betrayal, even as its heartwood was sent endless miles away, a captive of the sea, never to know the soft loamy feel of soil ever again.

Jess howled in fury, feeling as much the forest in the guise of humanity as she did a Squire channeling the woods, and the door, trembling with the pain of its butchery, still bleeding sap, howled as well, bursting inward, filling the air with sharp wooden spikes spearing into the waiting guardsmen who stumbled back, screaming as their flesh was perforated by scores of sharp wooden spikes just before the bloodied weapons of Squires and Aspirants caved in helmets, ruptured hearts, and cleaved free limbs in a shower of crimson death.

Jess and her battle-brethren poured into the keep, hungry for blood, howling for more.

"Berserkers!" The desperate scream echoed through the air, and Jess howled with mad laughter, her blade laughing in its own way, lashing out so fast it seemed to bob and weave like a flicker of flame, as crimson as any fire, sprayed with a fine red mist as limbs were cleaved free of the soldiers who dared oppose her, suddenly shrieking men who hushed only when her blade licked their throats, bodies crashing to the ground, the gurgle of crimson showering her in warm mist, the sharp tang of copper permeating the air. When Jess licked the crimson spray from her lips, she found it as sweet as any wine.

"By all the gods, you are a savage one! I look forward to taming you, Jess, body and soul."

Sharing a single glance of darkest glee with a blood-spattered Mord, Jess raced off, feeling fiercest kinship with the man she so loved to hate, knowing that the rest of her pack was but feet behind her.

Stechen thrust, step slide away, weave aside wild swing, cleaving blow in turn. Oberhau met Zwerchhau, blade flying free even as Jess's own speared the surprised looking duelist through the throat, his eyes widening with horror as Jess wrenched her blade free, the man collapsing to the ground in a spray of blood. And the strange quiet roared through Jess almost as loudly as the screams of death and battle, of sweet gibbering madness washing over her still.

Polished door of ancient redwood before her. Her foes trembling inside.

The lock burst free, barricaded door swinging wide to her touch, and now it was a terrified Duke Arbingion who stumbled back, hands raised high, eyes locked upon the blade Jess held in hands trembling not at all with a killer's fury. Jess had no eyes for the elegantly furnished room within, decanters of crystal upon a table laid out even now with a decadent spread, finely carved chairs slammed to the ground, screams of panic echoing through the air that were muffled not at all by the exquisite tapestries of bucolic countrysides hung upon each of the hardwood walls.

Dressed as finely as any noble could be, the Duke Arbingion's gaze of terror turned to bitterest fury.

Jess shuddered. The man looked so very much like his son.

And his first words were, “Please, tell me that bastard lies! I will pay you any amount of coin, title and land will be yours! Please... just lead me to my son. Safe, unharmed, captured as leverage against me. But alive. By all the gods, I beg you, tell me he lives!”

Mord's cruel, mocking laughter washed over Jess and the desperate man before her. “Ah, it is so much sweeter than that, dear Duke Arbingion. For not only is your precious little boy lying in a muddy ditch like a common cutpurse, it is the very filly you plead with that broke his neck in the first place! Delightful twist of irony there, is it not?”

"You gods damned whore! My son, he had eyes for you, you damned fool. Did you not know? He didn't even know, didn't even know he was mine!" The duke began to sob. Jess refused to let it shock her, biting back bitter tears of nothing.

“Why? Why did you kill my son?”

Her nemesis gazed at Jess with desperate eyes, hands even now clenched furiously upon a sword he dared not draw, and Jess realized she had no answer she could possibly give that would make things better. Make things right. The man before her that could have become her father-in-law.

She could never heal the horror she had inflicted, the damage she had caused.

“Why... why did you kill my son?”

She had no answer she could possibly give.

So she ran him through.