“Is it done?” Lady Uthain asked. The pleasantries had been put aside, tedious as they were, and so the moment of interest was at hand. Her uncle, for his part, had seemed just as interested. A moment to boast, most probably, where he could tell the tale as his own, as if he had been there. It was expected, yet his expression betrayed that expectation.

“They fell for it, as we’d expected. Surrounded them and took back the fort in quick order before torching damned the thing.” That hadn’t been the plan, as far as she recalled. They were to use the fort as a stepping stone, a place to hold supplies for regiments moving through the area, as well as a scouting base.

“And of the beast?” Fort or no, it worried her greatly that he hadn’t mentioned it. The other reason they let the fort be taken.

Her uncle’s eyes darted around, his shoulders bracing themselves, yet he didn’t speak. Lost for words, well and truly. An army of thousands against a squabble of men and animals, all surrounded by thousands more of the Uthain Kingdom’s soldiers, led by hundreds of its finest knights and Artifs. Yet they failed in killing the beast, it seemed, else the body, lost amongst piles of corpses and puddles of blood and excretions, had not been subject to a thorough enough search before removing any and all evidence that they had even been there.

“A bungled job, then,” she said. Lord Robb did nothing to deny it, merely scratching his head as he looked away. For all his bluster, useless at the first sign of difficulty. Such was royalty. “At least give me details, uncle.”

He shifted in his chair, turning his gaze to the window, light almost blinding as it shone on its panes. Despite the light, she shivered. Cold? No. Something else.

“We only found corpses,” he said. Was that not the point? To set Darstin and the beast against one another, to come in later and clean away the refuse that remained? What was so odd about corpses, on a battlefield of all places?

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Dartin, they didn’t have any survivors. Two thousand men against less than a hundred. I don’t care that the beast was a giant, it shouldn’t have been possible. One second they heard the sounds of fighting, in the next, nothing. Silence. And the corpses… if the report is true, the corpses were rotted. Wood and plants, too, and all the steel had rusted over.”

“Are you certain?”

“Liard wouldn’t lie to me, he doesn’t have the gall. And the Domicus serving with him corroborate his report. All of them.”

Lord Robb leaned back in his chair, head lolling back, eyes closed. Lady Uthain, speechless, watched on, uncertain of how to feel. Surely it was some jest? She hoped, though she knew it was not.

“What of…” she started, the words caught in her throat, choking her as she swallowed them. Her uncle’s eyes barely twitched at the words, though his mouth moved nonetheless.

“They didn’t find the beasts corpse. They found the other four, but with his size… well, that is the state of things, I’m afraid.”

“Do you think it will come for revenge?” That was always how it went in the tales. Betray a spirit and it will plot your downfall, bring about your humiliation and, in some tales, your death. A tale to scare children into behaving, yet apt to their own situation.

“Might. Might not. Matters not, we’ll increase our guard, regardless,” he replied. “So, any ideas of what to do with the rest? Seems killing them may not be in our best interest.”

“I’m uncertain. Leave them be, for now. Continue with our agreement, tell them their leader died in battle. We’ll watch how they react.”

Robb’s chest expanded as he breathed, silent, tossing an arm over his eyes as he laid back further in his chair. Lady Uthain shivered again as she imagined the corpses, flesh rotted black and almost turned to liquid, maggots crawling from empty eye sockets, bone showing through. The fort, on fire, releasing a choking black smoke that she could almost feel in her own lungs. The imagery, so vivid in her mind she could not help but to feel an itch in her throat.

Then the burning. Like hot coals, her lungs burned as she coughed, black smoke spewing forth with each one. She collapsed at the pain, scratching at her throat and lungs, eyes flooded with tears and smoke, her uncle yelling, a disembodied voice calling for help, a stray hand gripping her shoulder as the fire in her lungs grew. She saw only the stacks of smoke rising from the fallen fort, and at its center a beast, half-man half-goat and as large as a peasant’s home, horns alight with flames like a golden crown, embers escaping its snout with each breath. A final image before nothingness overtook her.