“Not even our coldest winters could match this,” Cali mumbled from beneath her scarf. We had moved around the outer rim of the quarry site to try and find a way down. Eventually we came across a gentle dirt ramp that had been constructed against one of the natural walls. From there it was a long, boring walk to the camp that we had spotted from across the way.

The HQ had been long since abandoned by the living. It consisted of several small wooden structures, some tents, and a large fire in the middle designed to keep everyone warm while they were taking a break from the backbreaking labour. On the other side, several carts had been left behind. Some of them were filled with baskets and crates – which contained fresh loads of marble and stone. The attack had occurred so suddenly that they had to drop everything and leave.

The grisly aftermath of one of those attacks was left splattered across the ground a small way away from the camp. What could best be described as a pile of bones and gore was all that was left of him. The icy weather had preserved his corpse and kept decay away. In this case, rotting was a preferable fate to the visage of terror that could be seen beneath a blanket of frozen blood.

I looked over the body for as long as I could stomach it. It definitely looked like he’d been attacked by a large creature of some description. Yet there was something strange about the whole thing. There was no sign of a disturbance, no giant claw prints in the snow and dirt. Surely such a large monster would have displaced it or left tracks behind, unless it was somehow capable of full-fledged flight as well.

I kept searching for more information as Tahar approached me from behind. I kicked the dirt aside at the man’s feet, brushing the snow aside and revealing the bare ground below. There was dried blood that had leaked through and melted the snow. It wasn’t anything too strange until I moved further back and did it again, and again. Slowly – the full scale of the bloodstain started to strain my suspension of disbelief.

“They dragged him here.”

Tahar was confused, “Why? They said he was killed by a drake.”

“And a drake wouldn’t delicately pick the guy up and bring him over here. It’d crush him even worse than he is now. This guy getting savaged? I can buy that much – but this stain tells me that they moved him after the fact. Pretty sure they said they couldn’t do anything and fled right away.”

Tahar gave them the benefit of the doubt, “They may have misspoken.”

Possibly. The man I spoke to only had one perspective on the matter. He had his own biases and experiences, and his own way of speaking with others. He may have been using hyperbolic language to describe the stress and urgency of the situation to me. Either way, the attack wasn’t so chaotic that they didn’t try to rescue this guy. The reason they even tried eluded me. He was clearly not long for the world, with half of his body hanging loose on a thin tether of organs and muscle. A single glance would tell you that he was done for.

“Can you see any more tracks from here?”

Tahar looked around. I knew from other people that using a high-level tracking skill would highlight any traces for them. It was a form of magical detection, one that defied the rules of normality to offer a substantial benefit. Tahar was having no luck.

“It appears that the drake did not touch down here.”

The blood stain was pointing deeper into the quarry. I glanced back at Cali, who was perusing the abandoned camp on her own. She was already occupied. I continued on my way without her for the time being. Tahar stuck close as we followed the marks for a significant distance. My mind was being coiled tight like a bound spring. The tension was ratcheting up as I found myself becoming increasingly incredulous of the story I had been told.

Tahar had made it clear that the pile of excrement we had found was the real thing; there was a drake hiding somewhere in these hills. How had this man died? And who had moved his body all the way back to the camp? The trail finally came to an end against a sheer rock wall. There was more evidence of a bloody demise here. It was still painted on the cliff face before us and there was a large puddle of it on the floor. It exploded outwards into a violent splatter.

“I’m starting to think that something fishy is going on here.”

“Something was here,” Tahar affirmed, “But the tracks are over this way.” She walked several metres away from the body and used her tough claws to wipe away the snow. My breath was stolen by the scale of the thing. An imprint had been pressed into the ground by a huge foot. It was subtle, but it was so large that I could lay down in it comfortably with room to spare. The ice had kept the compacted dirt in place for weeks.

I was starting to doubt our ability to slay it, “I guess that confirms our drake is out here.”

“I think it clambered back over this cliff and into the woods. Strong beast, very dangerous.”

With that done we turned back to the camp and tried to find Cali. We had no luck until we heard her calling out for us from inside one of the outer tents. She was hovering over a table with a small crate between her palms. Dozens of other boxes in various shapes and sizes had been crammed inside with it.

“What’s this?”

Cali opened the top of the crate and retrieved a small glass bottle, corked and filled with a glittering blue substance. The reflection cast blue spots onto the tent walls around us. Her nose crinkled like she was smelling something sour. “This is concentrated Mana Stone, I don’t know of which variety. But the strong magical scent is unmistakable.”

“Mana Stone – like what they make catalyst powder out of?”

“Yes. Though this concentration would be useless inside of a launcher, it would break the mechanism even with a weak spell. It is also extremely volatile. Some people elect to use it as a form of explosive. If the miners were retrieving a large amount of this as waste product and had nobody to sell it to, they may have started using it to blast out this quarry more efficiently.”

“Why wouldn’t they sell it on?”

Cali placed it back into the box with care; “The powder market is extremely complex and rife with political wargames. Contracts are signed with the expectation of large quantities being delivered quickly. What we see here would not be enough to satisfy most buyers, and those same buyers would have other motives for supporting a particular supplier over another.”

“So it’s easier to use it as a blasting tool?”

“Yes. That seems to be the case.”

This was what attracted the drake to the area. A single pickaxe couldn’t make the same kind of violent detonation as this. Surely you could hear an explosion in a place like this for miles around. It would ricochet through the hills and go even further than normal. The perfect recipe to let everyone and everything know where you are. It was unlucky for them that dragons didn’t file noise complaints.

“There is residue from detonations all over this area. It’s especially powerful where you and Tahar went a few moments ago. I believe it was a recent one.”

“But that area was done with. It didn’t look like they were getting anything from there. It’s where we found his body’s original location.”

“His body?”

“We followed the blood trail. It looks like someone grabbed what was left of him and brought him back here.”

“An accident then?” Cali proposed, “A small explosion from a handful of these stones would result in a body being torn apart. It also leaves little visible residue.”

I stroked my chin, “But Tahar confirmed there was a drake here.”

Cali was on top of it again, “Then the answer is simple – both may have occurred concurrently. The explosion may have attracted the monster in question, giving them time to remove his body from the original location. When the drake arrived they were forced to flee and leave him there.”

Tahar butted in with more evidence, “There are no tracks here in the camp. The truth is uncertain.”

The two stared at each other and for a moment I was worried they were about to butt heads over it. That would have been a first. They weren’t on good terms, but they had never argued about anything of importance during our journey. Tahar was happy to follow along and offer her expertise when it was needed. Despite her emotional restraint, Cali was always the one who had stronger opinions on my decisions and actions.

Cali blinked first and adjusted her theory, “Perhaps they were so terrified that they fled before anything could occur. There was no further danger to them. We should not take their testimony at face value. They were labourers placed into a stressful situation, it would be expected for them to mistake the sequence of events or exaggerate them to elicit an advantageous reaction from us.”

I shrugged, “Seemed like he didn’t want anything to do with us. I don’t think that guy had enough wits to use reverse psychology on us…”

“Reverse… what?”

"Nothing.”

I took one of the bottles from the crate and carefully slid it into my pack for later. A plan was already fermenting inside of my head. If the drake was attracted to the noise of the blast, then we could use it to lure the thing out of hiding into a position that was better for us.

“Be careful with that. A single spark can detonate it.”

“I know, I know.” I had purposefully wrapped it in a few layers of my spare clothes to make extra sure that nothing could touch it. With the first piece of my plan secured in a non-flammable location, I peered my head through the flaps of the tent and found that the entire landscape was starting to darken. The skies had cleared, though the air temperature had dropped even further. Sunset came quickly.

Cali spoke my concern before I could, “We should go back and sleep for the night. We will have more time to search for the drake tomorrow.”

“Good,” Tahar nodded, “Any longer and I fear that my feathers will freeze.”

Back to the village it was.

When we returned to the chapel, Sandra was conspicuous by her absence. She had been kind enough to hand me a spare key so we could let ourselves in. The building took on an even more menacing atmosphere as the light faded over the valley. Those murals caught the shadows and created deep, lurching visages.

We were all worn down from a long day of walking and investigating. This was no pleasant stroll, and the only thing on my mind was crashing down into my sleeping bag and drifting off to where my worries weren’t so ever-present. Cali and Tahar were quick to occupy the room so they could wash themselves down with some water they had taken from the well outside. The time it would take to heat the water meant that I was out on my own for some time.

Finding something to distract myself with was difficult. Old me would have had a smartphone on hand and plenty of websites to browse. As it was, I had to sit on one of the pews and consider the situation. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on in the village – something that happened to coincide with the arrival of the drake.

A pale body covered with black strands of hair emerged from the shadows, and stood at the altar with a malicious smile on her face; “Oh, to stand here at the apex after so long. And to think – the Branch Church was always so sure that they’d last for thousands of years.”

I interlaced my fingers and leaned towards her, “Anything to say?”

“The Branch Church made a number of enemies, and I’m sure that I was one of them. I gain a great deal of satisfaction from standing here now and seeing those pews empty.”

“You remember?”

She shook her head, “No. It is a purely emotional reaction, an instinct if you will. I remember some things about the Church. They were so ever-present in the daily lives of the people back then, even in my state of undeath I find their beliefs instilled into my being; above even the memories that I find most precious.”

“That does all feel rather insidious.”

“Indeed. They tried to become more than they really were. To entwine themselves with every aspect of our lives, to become the arbiters of what was right and wrong. They nearly succeeded. Yet now they are mostly forgotten, their chapels transformed into museums for those who cling onto a past gone by.”

“Did you appear to do more than gloat? There’s nobody here to listen to you but me.”

She twisted a lock of her hair between the tips of her fingers, “Always so serious. Does your curiosity not extend to knowing who I am?”

“Frankly, no. The sooner we can split up the better.” Stigma opened her mouth to respond but then allowed it to hang open. I was certain that she wanted to make some form of ‘seductive’ comment about us being together forever. For whatever reason, she did not elect to do so on this occasion. She clamped it shut and took a moment to consider her words more carefully.

“I will afford you this then. The moment we stepped into this town I sensed something unusual. I suspect that it is a Branch.”

“Another tree?”

“No. Not a live one. That would bring about significant upheaval. Members of the church would take wood from dying Branches and transform them into holy items. They were a source of authority and awe to the common people.”

“You think one of these holy items is here in this village? Is it in this chapel?”

“No. Regardless of its ownership, it gives you a profound sense of discomfort to be near one. So, I suggest that you finish this task with haste and let us be away from here.”

The conversation was interrupted by Tahar calling out to me; “Ren, we have finished cleaning ourselves! There is enough left for you as well!”

I regarded Stigma with a frown. “Noted. I don’t intend to stay here any longer than we need to. I never liked the cold anyway.”

Stigma faded into mist again and spoke through my head, “Hmph. A bounty of soul energy from the dragon shall be a fine recompense.”

All we had to do was kill it first.