Aegar swept his hand across his face, freeing his vision from the acrid smoke that blanketed the air. The bitter taste clawed at his throat, and he knew that its scent would permeate his clothes and that of his tent, and there it would remain until the campaign was complete and Aegar safe at home, a reminder of this day, and every day he had suffered through this campaign.

Burning wagons, broken spears, and crushed catapults slowly seeped into the bubbling mud surrounding him, which in turn spewed out wrecked and bloated bodies. With each turn, Aegar's gaze met the remnants of what once were men, no longer a person but a rotting carcass of torn flesh, shredded unnaturally by the horrors of war. The battle cries had ended hours ago, yet a macabre symphony persisted: a constant humming in his ears, a buzzing of feasting flies, and the slow and miserable expulsion of gas as the natural world deflated around him.

Twenty men knelt in defeat before him, ropes binding their wrists, rough halter ropes chafing their necks. Their eyes, wide and trembling, darted about, never settling, never meeting his gaze. Tears streaked some faces, while others convulsed with silent shivers. They stank of death as much as he did. They wore light armour of quilted vests, meagre chain mail, and a battered collection of helmets, some older than Aegar's grandfather. 

One man's strength gave way, and he collapsed, his fall to the sodden earth, splashing mud onto Aegar's boots. A guard moved to lift him, but at Lord Pyrus's stern command, "Leave him," he stepped back. He could drown in the mud. They could all drown, for all were traitors, aligned with a fool who had retreated to the nearby castle of Asbeet, and here he had left these pitiful men to die. No explanation was needed as to what would occur next. It was clear in their fretful eyes and fearful tremors that they were preparing for their end.

Aegar halted before a prisoner whose pale skin and fine, silvery hair glimmered in the murky light. The sky was darkening in preparation for rain, and yet this man shone like a beacon. His expression remained vacant, but his eyes flickered back and forth across the battlefield, chasing between body and wreckage. A fine beaded sweat was forming on his brow, despite the cool September air. He made no note of the living, even the prince standing before him did not affect his trance. He only had eyes for the dead.

With a swift motion, Aegar drew his sword, the sound of steel slicing through the air. It's ultrasonic edge pulsated in the gathering gloom, eager for its next strike. That garnered the man's attention, driving his sunken dark eyes into hollow pinpricks. His mouth began to move, silent, but urgent. It was a reaction Aegar knew well. The man was praying.

'He is a Magi,' Pyrus noted.

Aegar pressed the sword's flat side against the man's cheek, provoking a startled reaction. Words tumbled from him in a rush, a prayer or plea lost in madness.

'But not a soldier,' Aegar replied. 'Question him,' he ordered. 'Kill the others.' He sheathed the sword and continued his trudge through the battlefield. Behind, he heard the cries of the men, then immediate and deafening silence.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Pyrus leant back in his chair and eyed the pale prisoner with suspicion. He dangled from the ceiling by his wrists like a cut of meat in the butcher's display. with hands a darkening purple as the blood evaded his veins.

'Please,' he sobbed, slowly spinning under his own weight. 'I speak the truth.'

'You speak of a myth.'

'No myth. My Lord, I beg of you.'

Pyrus rose with ease to his feet. 'Tell me of Montpensier's plans. How many men does he have stationed at Asbeet? Have you seen his arsenal?' 

The man shook his head in response. His eyes were tired, and his breath rattled through his soft, plump body, as pale as his face, and to Pyrus, a man of war, disturbingly smooth and even in texture. He was used to interrogating criminals and spies, their faces tough and their bodies scarred from a life of battle, just as his own. He would have to work them, beating them, testing the limits of their resolve, and when their tongues would fall silent, he would take his knife and saw at their body, separating the nose from the face, pealing away the ears, and piercing the soft sponge of their eyeballs. But he could not commit such acts with this overgrown child, and judging by the man's cries, he would not need to.

Pyrus looked down at that soft, fleshy stomach that had never known a blade or the emptiness of hunger. He pressed his long gnarled finger between the ribs, causing the man to swing, straining the wrists further and emitting new cries.

'Answer the question.'

'I am a man of the angels!' the man cried. 'Why would I turn against my King? He is anointed by the angels themselves! Oh believe my lord! To betray my King is to betray my kind.'

'Everyone betrays everyone.'

'Not I. I say death to any who offend the sanctity of our kind.'

Pyrus removed his knife and placed the hilt against the soft belly, eliciting fresh cries of panic.

'How now, My Lord! How do I offend?'

'By lying. I find you, dressed in the colours of the bishop, on the battlefield with a sword in hand, and you would have me believe otherwise?'

'I have no reason to lie to you. I am a man of the angels. I am their servant.'

The flap to the tent opened to reveal a knight dressed in golden armour. causing both men to glance up in surprise. Pyrus bowed his head. 'Your Highness,' he intoned. 

Aegar removed his helmet. 'How goes it?

'This man has but one story, and it is not the one we seek.'

'Your Highness,' the man gasped. 'Please! I speak the truth. I only speak the truth!'

Aegar perched on the edge of the table. 'Then speak it.'

'For the past ten years, I have served as a brother in The Stiriphese.'

'The Striphese? You are with the Ananans?'

The pale man's face twisted in annoyance. 'Why would I be with those animals? No, Your Highness, I am a brother, a servant of the angels.'

'Then why are you here?'

'I had business in Asbeet.'

Aegar leant forwards with a creek of leather and steel. 'With the bishop?'

The man visibly rolled his eyes and began to laugh until Pyrus drove the hilt of his knife back into the man's guts. He choked with the winding while his head drooped heavily into his soft, plump chest. Pyrus reached out a gnarled fist to grip the silver blonde hair and dragged the man's attention back into the room.

'Answer the fucking question,' Pyrus ordered. 'Were you meeting with the bishop?'

'I'm not worthy. I'm just an accountant, and I've been away for ten years. I had no idea he was a traitor to the crown. I had come down from the Stiriphese for an audit, not to fight. They grabbed me, dressed me in his colours, and pushed me out onto the field. Look at me, my prince. I was not built for war. I was tasked with caring for a woman. A woman who never ages, who never seeks the sun, and who only eats the flesh of men. We lived inside of the mountain.'

Aegar glanced hesitantly between the two men. 'The mountain woman? The myth? What do you mean you cared for her?'

Pyrus shook his head subtly. 'I would not keep him on this track, Your Highness. He is determined to throw us off the scent.'

Aegar raised a gloved finger. 'I wish to know. Tell me more.'

The silver-haired man grinned. 'Thank you, Your Highness. For three hundred years, my brothers and I have been tasked with the care of this woman. She is a monster, her condition an unnatural creation of the demons that your great ancestor, Leric, dispelled from this land. We can not free her, for she would bring a great curse upon this world, and we can not kill her, for she is a Magi of noble birth, and so we care for her and will continue to until the end of time.'

'I know this myth,' Aegar agreed. 'I have heard tales of a woman in the mountains who eats the flesh of those who find themselves lost amongst the land. I always thought that was a tale the Ananans told to keep us out of their land.'

'Not a myth my prince. I would not lie to you. I could not lie to you.'

Pyrus bashed the hilt of the blade against the man's cheek. 'And yet you lie again. You are not three hundred years old. You are thirty, at the most.'

'Not a lie! Not a lie!' the man cried. 'My body may be thirty, but it is just a vessel for the angel that lives within me. I am a servant of the angels. I am their man.'

Aegar nodded at Pyrus. 'I've heard enough. Leave him for a bit.'

'No!' the man panicked. 'No, my Lord, please, my hands, I can not feel my hands!'

Pyrus raised one eyebrow. 'Is that an angel saying that or just the vessel he resides in?'

The man gasped and shook, struggling within his bonds. Pyrus held open the tent door for Aegar, and the two men left. They walked for a short while between the tents of the encampment, surrounded by screams of their own wounded soldiers and the laughter and chuckle of those who survived, toasting another day of life upon this world.

'Montpensier has burnt the land around Asbeet,' Aegar said. 'He is planning to stay, and he is keeping the entire town hostage to do so.'

Pyrus looked behind him. The brightly coloured tents seemed deflated as the men within them. 'We can not fight again just yet. If Montpensier is planning a siege, we can wait him out.'

'We could assassinate him,' Aegar said.

Pyrus blinked in surprise at the suddenness. 'A worthy plan, Your Highness, one which I would be happy to carry out in your name.'

Aegar shook his head. 'Not you. You could sneak in there and destroy Montpensier and the bishop with enough ease to make it seem like an accident. There would be questions and intrigue, and in the wake of Montpensier's death, another noble intent of the destruction of our kingdom would take his place. I want no intrigue, only fear. Did that tale not scare you as a child? The woman who gobbles up those lost in the mountains of The Stiriphese?'

Pyrus frowned. 'No, Your Highness, for it was just a myth, a warning tale for children not to take foolish adventures into the land of the Ananans.'

'You saw the intent in that man's eyes. He was not lying.'

'He told us he was possessed by an angel.'

'But I don't think he was lying about the woman. He knew so much. So many details. Think about it, Pyrus. I don't want just to assassinate Montpensier. I want his death to be a statement, and what is more of a statement than a woman of legend.'

'A three-hundred-year-old cannibalistic Magi noble woman? Aegar, please.'

Prince Aegar frowned at the sound of Pyrus casually using his first name. 'You think me a fool?'

Pyrus took a deep breath. 'No.'

'Have Captain Rycard train and ready the men for the next battle. We're close to the mountains. I want to leave tomorrow and see the truth of this legend for myself.'

Pyrus could not contain the grimace of displeasure on his narrow face, but still, he bowed in compliance. When he returned to the tent, a medic was covering a body. A tuft of silvery hair peaked between the blankets.

'What happened?' he demanded.

The medic shrugged. 'He died.'

'I can see that! What did he die from?'

'We're at war, my Lord.'

The comment immediately increased Pyrus, and he grabbed the medic by the throat and tossed him to the ground. 'I don't have time for your stupidity. What did this man die from?'

'By his own hand, my Lord, but I do not yet precisely know how! He began to foam at the mouth! A madness overtook him!'

'Poison?'

The medic instinctively raised a hand to defend himself. 'Please, my Lord, I saw it myself. He clamped down on something in his mouth, and then he died. Before he passed, he told me that Merinosis had spoken to him and that his duty was complete.'

Pyrus glared and removed the sheet to reveal that soft, pathetic body. His pale lips had turned dark purple while his eyes had rolled back to the stars. With speed and frustration, Pyrus began to move across the body, poking the flesh and pulling at the skin. There must be an answer, proof of his lies. He turned the man's head to one side. The tongue lolled free, speckled with flecks of foam. A tattoo on his neck was revealed. A strange shield showing the eight-sided star of Astraen on the head of an animal.

'What is that?' he asked of the medic, slowly rising to his feet with uncertainty. 'What is that animal?'

The medic shrugged. 'A goat, maybe? I wouldn't like to guess, my Lord.'

Pyrus removed his knife, slid it under the skin, and roughly cut around the tattoo. He took a handkerchief from the sleeve of his quilted tunic and gently laid the tattoo down. 'Burn the body with the other traitors,' he ordered.