In a blood-scented moment, the three creep forward at the side and around to the front of the door. Exasperated breaths, the sounds of fear and anticipation, can all be heard inside as an easterner speaks a sentence in a frustrated tone.

“I don’t know!” responds a frail, horrified voice. The three exchange glances as they realize there’s a captive in the grasp of the easterners. Rayull peaks up slightly and sees a group of four eastern mages grouped around a western boy tied to a chair. To the left in the room is one more westerner, and to the right are four corpses.

The dragon’s eyes flare with hatred.

Rayull makes a quick hand gesture, signifying him as the door-puncher, and the other two as the rush element. There’s one last moment for preparation, and then Rayull raises his foot parallel to the door.

The door smashes in and the two humans leap in. To screams of alert, three of the mages pull out their instruments of magic, two with staves and one with a wand, and they start casting their assault spells.

“Con’Fressul, Materi-” The spell of the front-most mage (Verrat Crusint, age 26, P.eople’s F.reeland of U.lteria-states M.ilitary Magic Corps second class, obsessive bird watcher,) is interrupted immediately by the crazed Carl, soaring forward and slashing deep through the neck, cutting two inches into the man’s ribcage.

“-Materio seta-” The second closest caster (Mell Territ, age 24, P.F.U.M. Magic Corps first class, delivered her second kid three months before she was drafted,) meets Vulrick’s sword and shield in tandem, slamming his bulwark against her back as he chops down at her neck, beheading her instantly.

“-Setaran, At m-” the penultimate mage (Bort Halbent, age 21, P.F.U.M. first class, never kissed a girl that wasn’t his mother,) loses his entirety once Rayull slams his mace down into the boy, shattering every bone present in his chest and scraping his entrails onto the concrete of the room in a single motion.

“-Mon fraety!” Casts the fourth mage, the only one who had the thought of back up to the edge of the room, the only one to complete his spell.

From the man’s staff a long, chaining bolt of lightning leaps from the staff, putting everyone save Rayull on the ground. As Vulrick, Carl, and the captives convulse from the surge, Rayull arcs his mace back for another hit.

The final mage’s gaze widens in horror, and leaps backwards at the window as if to escape, though the aperture is far too small for him to fit. “Hell Dragon scum! Hell to you!” He shouts in a heavily-accented tone.

Rayull raises a brow as he approaches. “You’ve heard the rumors, right? What my kind does to the coward of a hunt?” he asks, approaching the lanky, robed man.

“Vsh’andka, s-” the mage is silenced the second Rayull rams the ball of his mace into his stomach, forcing a well of blood out his mouth. It takes him a few seconds, but his desire to scream is great enough to continue yelling.

“Hell to you! Please! Let go me! Please!” the mage, now delirious with adrenaline, says. He’s still attempting to free himself from the pin of the mace and get away.

“Normally I’d forgive you and spare you the discomfort. But I’m hungry, and you deserve it.”

The lower torso of the easterner darkens with urine once he picks out the word “hungry”. Rayull takes the easterner (Xine Zetou, age 27, P.F.U.M. Magic Corps fourth class, took excellent care of his father in his later years,) by the neck and bites off his arm, crushing the bone between his chip-sized teeth and tearing the flesh off as if it had been slow-cooked for hours.

Vulrick, the first on his feet, sees a crimsoned Hoss’Rayull, snout-deep in the entrails of the last mage. He doesn’t stop him, and instead goes to unbind the two captives. Carl gets to his feet next, but is startled seeing his commanding officer gulping down human flesh. “Rayda’s blood! Holy shit!” Carl starts back and trips over the chair that was holding one of the captives.

Rayull finishes the ceremonial “killing bite” and he rises. He uses one of the mage’s robes to wipe off his snout before glancing back to his fellows. “Something the matter, Yarland?” he asks, also picking a bit of intestine off a tooth as he regains his professional composure.

“N-no sir! I just, you know. You sure don’t see that every day! I mean, you know?! Fuck!” Carl mutters.

Rayull scoffs. “I suppose if you’ve never had one of my kind in a fight party it would seem a bit alien to you. I was hungry, and I thought it would be sensible to skip a ration for myself. That and it’s considered polite to eat the heart when you’re saving a comrade.”

“Wh-what?”

“To honor the spirits,” Rayull says plainly.

A thin-lipped smile crosses Carl’s face. “Ri-right, sir. For the crown.”

“For the crown, indeed,” the dragon-kin officer says as Vulrick finishes getting the two captives to their feet. “Or would you consider it to be ‘cannibalism’,” he notes, getting back on the obvious topic still at-hand.

Carl takes a moment and realizes that he’s no better than that. He’d kill one of them to take their food, after all. He responds with a shrug before speaking: “I ‘spose that’s about all they’re good for, really. They might as well be food,” he says, masking over his disgust.

“Sir,” Vulrick says, giving a minor salute. The two freed captives salute with him.

The closest to Vulrick is a naked, whipped, cut Kanvanian, his pale body contrasting heavily to the multitude of reddish-brown wounds. The skin around his mouth is red with a binding. This is the one they were torturing.

The other is a Spirakandrin-Ragnivanian mix, darker skin than most of the West, but of a mild height and build expected of the midlands, he has a pair of glasses resting on his nose and he wears a cloak over his gear. Beneath the cloak is the teasing glint of knives, daggers, and other tools of assassination. What’s more, Rayull didn’t recognize him under all the dirt.

“…Dresmond?” Rayull asks with an incredulous tone.

Dresmond Ulveroth, the cloaked one, adjusts his glasses, and lowers his hood. “Well, I’ll be damned. My glasses must be dirty! Rayull!”

Carl spits. “Show your superior some respect, kid.”

Rayull holds his hand up to stop. “No, I know this boy from the Liefland incident, just a few days ago we split to be reassigned, actually.”

Dresmond averts his gaze. “Our officer,” he nods his head over to one of the western corpses, “was fresh out of the command academy. Things were going alright until these mages popped up,” he says, kicking the corpse of one of the eastern wizards.

Carl nods. “So you two are close?”

Rayull squints an eye. “As close as is proper for our stations, yes. We fought necromancers together.”

Carl draws back with a raised brow. “Damn. That must have been some real shit.”

Dresmond shrugs, a rare smirk is across his usually cold-serious face. “It was some kind of shit, alright.”

Rayull nods. “Seeing as your officer’s dead, I’ll have to take the two of you under my charge. I know you, Dresmond, but who are you?” he says, looking to the cut up Kanvanian.

The Kanvanian wipes a bit of dried saliva from his chin, “Mullant Peretaine, First Armsmen, magic corps.”

Rayull snuffs out some smoke. “Spell caster?”

Mullant nods. “Cover-craft.”

A few pleased looks are exchanged and Carl shoves him lightly. “Glad to hear! You handle the spells, and I’ll deal with the fighting, got it?”

Mullant takes a moment to smirk tiredly. “Sure.”

Rayull feels a presence by the window- like he’s being aimed at. “It’s fine, Letallk. We took care of them.”

Awnway, Cet, and Bayl file through the door. “Always good to know for sure, though,” Awnway says, looking over the two additions to the group.

Introductions are made, Mullant is treated, and the oath is remade without blood this time. It is discovered that the camp Awnway’s group found was actually of the now ex-captives. Awnway had the foresight to go ahead and loot it to maintain a good stock of things.

There is some minor searching around the area, but nothing of major interest. The talk turns to rest.

A tall building was found in the area, favored by Awnway for the sake of a lookout, and a decentralized, covered hovel was favored by Vulrick, for the sake of keeping visibility low. No trees around this time. They have to pick a building.

Rations are measured out and Hoss’Rayull delivers his decision that the hovel would be the better choice.