The journey they had made going out from Weald Hall had taken a day, the trip back took three. Jeria felt the comfort of the walls, roots, dirt and rock of the path comforting and close after the openness of the outside world. For Gruzz, the path was complicated by the tight confines and of having to pull the stretcher carrying the comatose woman. He sweated, ducked beneath entangling roots and took twice the time to move each pace as he had when making for the outside. Jeria took turns dragging the stretcher with the comatose woman, but even his strength, enhanced by his fiendish blood, was not a match for that of the half ogre and most of the time the burden fell to Gruzz.

"So, Jeria, now you see the glamour of being an Outwalker, the prestige and honour that comes with it. You get to go walking for a few hours outside, and then you get to drag back unconscious strangers in the hopes they can say something useful. A glorious existence indeed, being a pack horse for the city, a mule to the unconscious travellers of the world." He grinned, giving a small laugh as he adjusted the body of Gyv on the stretcher where it had started to slip even though she was tied in place.

As they walked, the two Outwalkers listened to the unconscious form of Gyv moaning incomprehensively, her voice alternating between high-pitched screams and guttural mutterings in a voice so deep they could not hear the half of what was said. When that voice emanated from her, Jeria looked at Gruzz, questioningly. Gruzz just shrugged, he did not understand the voice either, how it came to her or what it said.

The end of the fourth day found them at the turn in the passage, heading along the smoothed rock of the final stretch to the city. Both breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be back home. Maybe it was the proximity of the city, maybe the relief of the two that bore her was palpable and could be felt, but as they neared the city Gyv relaxed, her breathing deepening and her face relaxing.

"You can't escape me that easily." The face was mocking, handsome, the red flesh, green eyes and sharp fangs enhancing it, not detracting from the visage’s appearance, despite their alien nature. "Come now, Gyv, life is not that bad. You are strong, far stronger than most of your puny race. You could be a ruler, a wielder of power over vast parts of my realm. Think of the good you could do, the changes you could make for the better in the lives of the slaves." Her mind filled with images, of slaves with food, unharmed backs, clothing upon their bodies, and boots on their feet. Her mind kept shouting no, but in her dream she heard herself pledging fealty, promising herself, her fealty in the service to Kirest, Lord of the Dark, master of the Rule. In her mind the mocking face smiled, laughed and disappeared, as in the world outside two strangers carried her into the final corridor, into a city she had never seen, never heard of, to people unaware of the approaching danger.

***

Gate duty and guard duty, dull duties that could not be avoided but those required duties that he would forego if he could. Mekior chaffed at the imposition on his movement, on his enjoyment of stalking through the corridors that connected the city to others of its kind. He objected to the curtailment of his hunting down the enemies of the hidden realm, taking particular enjoyment in finding fiends that were out hunting, looking for victims and thinking themselves hunters when they would be his prey. He loved turning hunter to prey, the victimiser into the victim, his heart sang as their blood flowed, and the blacker the better. Mekior was no ordinary guard, no ordinary soldier, but a Fiend Hunter, a specialist in killing the fiends that ruled above. He was a master with any blade, his every strike powerful enough to hurt those fiends normally immune to even the mightiest blow of mortals, magic driving his sword to bite into the flesh of his enemies. Today, he stood at the gate, guarding the path from the outside world. He stood there because a fiend hunter when available always stood there. The mages had their spells to detect fiends but were easily countered. Guards could be issued inspection pins, but those were few and hard to get. Fiend hunters stood there when they were available because the city valued that power that fiend hunters had developed over the centuries of oppression, the ability to detect a fiend regardless of how it disguised itself. Nothing was known to be able to bypass that detection, though inside Mekior quailed since he knew it was fallible and he feared he might fail his city and bring them to doom.

Mekior saw the two Outwalkers as they entered the well-lit final stretch, saw them easily from the elevated guard post, nothing obstructing his view into the well-lit killing zone. As they came closer the details resolved themselves and he saw that the half-ogre dragging another on a stretcher besides him, the new Outwalker apprentice by his side. Quickly he consulted the log and saw that only two had left a mere three days ago, and those two were not due back for another week.

"Open the gate, it looks like Gruzz found something interesting out there and cut short his apprentice's first patrol." He left the lookout point, going down into the receiving area, wanting to check on the person being carried in, and to make sure the two Outwalkers had not been infected. He stood there, just within the open gate, his short, lithe figure clad in plate armour, its tabard decorated with the city crest, the joints articulated and protected by their own under-layer of chain mail and leather padding.

Jeria, walking slightly ahead of Gruzz and was the first to see the gates opening, and a grin broke out on his face. Home, they were home. Gruzz, looked up, saw the fiend hunter standing and waiting for them, and heaved a sigh of relief. In his mind there was the utter certainty that if it were not Gyv, not the person he supposed it to be, Mekior would know. He came in through the gate and gently lay the stretcher on the ground before collapsing to lie on his back and drink some water in his exhaustion. He looked up as he saw Mekior approaching and looking down at him.

"Mekior, greetings. Here to check us out? We should be ok; we haven’t been out for long enough to be in danger.” He looked down at the comatose Gyv, “No idea what condition she is in though, so check her out carefully. And when you're finished, organise some stretcher bearers for us, I can't pull her any further, the last couple of days have been rather unpleasant."

Mekior looked them all over, extending his senses as best he could. The half-fiends in the city always unsettled him. They all claimed to be loyal. They said and did all the right things and this one had obviously proved himself or he would not have been allowed into the Outwalkers. Still, they felt wrong, suspicious, his senses tingling in their presence. Who knew what secrets they harboured, what secrets lay hidden behind their skin, undetectable, hidden by their obvious fiendish heritage? What was there that he could not detect? Not so for the half-ogre he was a simple case, known, easily checked out. The woman was an unknown, if human it should be easy, but appearances could be deceiving.

Mekior's face scrunched up, brow furrowed in intense concentration as he wandered over to the woman, and held his hands just above her body, chanting a mantra beneath his breathe. He extended his senses to their full, straining to detect any echo of taint, any remnant of a fiend within. He felt swept up in a maelstrom of sensation, he saw the minute variations in the pigment of her skin, the smell of crushed leaves, of old and stale sweat. In all his inspection nothing screamed at him, nothing hinted at taint within, no fiendish presence could be felt there was not even a hint of anything amiss. So, when he turned to Gruzz, his face relaxed, at peace. “She’s fine, gotta repeat the process with you. No point in doing it on that one, his impurity in easy to see.” His glance at Jeria made it clear who he was referring to, his disdain obvious.

Again, he concentrated, this time wandering over the body of Gruzz while chanting. He picked up the fatigue of muscles, the sweat on his unbathed body, some mulch from the floor of the forest, dust from the caverns but no taint, no fiendish presence could be detected within.

"Welcome home." He looked at the half-fiend, and gave him a short nod, before waving forward some of the gate guards to perform stretcher duty.

Mekior moved ahead, accompanying Gruzz and Jeria as they followed the stretcher to the House of Healing.

"What's the story, Gruzz? Who's the woman?"

"It's Gyv, one of the commanders from the House of Souls. I met her a few years back. What I don't get is what she was doing unconscious, on our doorstep, a testing pin nearby. I checked her out on the long journey back. There is no obvious sign of taint and her only wound is a small, already healed, bite." Gruzz looked ahead at the stretcher-bearers and their burden. "I hope she wakes up. I would like some answers to the questions her presence raises.

"There is no taint within her, she is pure, clean. There is taint in this corridor, and it walks amongst us." His barbed comment was underscored by a pointed look at Jeria, the hatred he felt towards the half-fiend obvious. Mekior felt almost guilty for his actions, but it was expected, and who would believe him if he acted otherwise? Jeria just accepted the barbs, absorbing them as just one more taunt, the likes of which had peppered his life. Why worry about it? He was an apprentice in the Outwalkers, trusted to leave the city and enter the territory of the fiends, trusted to walk amongst their enemies and to not betray them. He just walked on, his head held high, ignoring the Fiend Hunter.

Gruzz, walking between the two, frowned. It was bad enough they had enemies on the outside, there was no need to fight amongst themselves. He said nothing, for at this moment peace seemed to reign. The Fiend Hunter seemed content to deliver barbs within words and nothing more, and Jeria blithely ignoring the taunts. He resolved that the matter must be discussed with Delire. Fiend Hunter and Outwalker often worked together, and any trouble must be resolved before it erupted in some unknown, and potentially hazardous, form. Peace must reign within so they could fight the war outside. He sighed as he looked at the two, it would not just be Mekior. Fiend Hunters were rare but often worked with and given their instincts it would not just be Mekior that would be against Jeria.

Mekior threw out another barbed comment and then walked away from Jeria, his back straight. Jeria seemed content to ignore him, walking quietly. Gruzz could imagine what was happening, Mekior trying to bait Jeria and getting frustrated at being ignored. Silently he scored in his head: Mekior 0 Jeria 1.