Carnage

Brianna had never been particularly bothered by the deaths of those she cared nothing for. Death was natural, an inevitable part of the world, and she did not see the point in wasting emotion on something that did not affect her personally. Sometimes, when she herself took a life, her emotions were stirred. She had felt powerful and free after Wyl's death, satisfied and triumphant after Moire's. Other bodies she had left in her wake were just that – bodies. Granted, killing was never a pleasant matter all by itself, unless one enjoyed such things as the cracking sound of a skull about to cave in or the sight of someone holding their own guts in their bare hands. It was a nasty, nauseating business, but a necessary one, and no advantage came of dwelling on the underlying terror of it. So Brianna didn't.

But never in her life had she felt so completely numb and indifferent to the deaths she caused as she did now.

It was not the lack of time for her to process all the killing. It was not even her mind making a conscious effort to block out the sounds of bones breaking and the metallic smell of fresh blood that was in the air.

It was the fact that there was so much, too much death around her. The sight of death, and the smell of death, and the sound of death were so prevalent that her sensitivity to it had overloaded and shut down. The only thing left was the knowledge that she had to keep killing. And so she did.

All that mattered was death. The only thing her mind knew through the haze and the numbness was that she needed to keep fighting, and there was always another orc to put down, always another opening for her blade. She was caught up in that whirlwind of death, not taking even a second to think because she knew it was either kill or be killed, and thoughts wouldn't change that fact, but make it worse to bear.

She did not know for how long the whirlwind raged before it calmed. At some point, she found herself sitting down with her back against the wall of the cave, blinking slowly.

Her senses came trickling back to her, one by one.

So much blood…

The smell of it was overpowering, so thick in the air that Brianna very nearly started gagging. The taste of it was on her tongue. Her armor was near coated by the splatters.

Sweat ran freely down her face, and the skin it touched stung as though she was sweating acid. She pulled off her glove and wiped at it clumsily. Her hand came away bloody.

Her hands were another matter. Holding on to the grip of a sword so tightly for so long meant that her fingers were cramped and sore. She had switched hands once the pain had gotten to be too distracting, but still her palm stung, and when she tried to flatten her hand against the ground her fingers cramped so hard that a muffled sob of pain escaped her.

"Men," was the first word she could make out from the muffled background noise, and she closed her eyes and tried to listen, to allow all of the distractions she had tuned out during the fight to affect her again.

"Humans."

Casavir's voice, carrying a note of desperation, no, of shock.

"They were humans, they… I do not understand."

"Might they have been prisoners?" someone else suggested. Sweet, timid female voice. Elis.

Someone cried out roughly. There was a moment of silence, as though they were all holding their breath.

"Armed prisoners who try to cut down their rescuers? I don't think so." Another female voice, strong, low and melodious, much more authoritative. Katriona.

"They might have been confused." Elis again, already doubting herself.

No one else said anything for a while, leaving Brianna to listen to ragged breathing and the scraping of metal on stone.

It seemed as good a time as any, so she opened her eyes and took in her surroundings for the first time.

They were in a separate room within the cave system, a widened dead end accessible through a door off to her left. Khelgar was standing guard by it. The dwarf was so covered in blood Brianna was not certain she could have made out his natural skin color just now. He had his jaw set, his face neutral, and was staring straight ahead.

To her right, the room opened to accommodate a several pieces of furniture that looked out of place in an orc cave, whose inhabitants tended to sleep on rags on the floor and wear the same clothes day in and day out. Yet there was a human-sized bed, and a wardrobe much like the one Brianna had had back in West Harbor, and she wondered what that meant.

Sandrik was lying on the bed. Brianna could make out his voice – he was the one screaming – but little else, because there were so many people crowded around him. Eventually her ears picked up Neeshka's voice, telling those holding Sandrik down to "hold him tighter", and after Brianna had sluggishly climbed to her feet, she understood.

What few healing potions they had were being saved for those injuries that were either immediately life-threatening or affecting fighting ability. Sandrik had sustained a deep, long pectoral cut that did not qualify for either of these, so Neeshka was stitching it up for the greycloak to keep him from bleeding out.

Casavir and Katriona were not part of the stitching-while-conscious procedure. Brianna staggered over to where they were kneeling next to a corpse that looked conspicuously not like an orc.

Casavir looked up at her before she had even said anything.

"They attacked us," he said, as though she had asked. "Along with the orcs. They are not dressed as prisoners, they carried weapons and they were well-trained. I cannot pretend to understand."

Brianna nodded and let her eyes rest on the face of the corpse. Male, dark hair, scruffy face, pale, almost sickly looking. Unremarkable. The left side of his skull had been crushed, likely the work of Casavir's hammer. She spotted fragments of bone amidst the hair matted with blood. Even more blood. Blood, everywhere, she felt it pulsate inside her in response, rushing through her body.

"Are you alright?" the Paladin asked.

She nodded automatically.

The blood kept rushing.

Her vision went dark, her knees gave way and she felt herself fall. The floor was hard.

The world blinked back into existence what felt like only seconds later. Sandrik was still screaming through whatever they had used to muffle his voice, and Casavir was holding her as though she were a precious doll made of glass.

She stared up into his bright, worried eyes.

"I apologize," he said, helping her sit upright. "I have spent what healing powers I have."

The mothering attitude did not sit well with her, despite the situation. Despite everything.

"I'm not injured," she forced out of her dry throat. She moved away from him, making him let go, but she knew she was not yet fit to get up on her own. So she spent her time looking around the room, trying to find a hint of who the man was that was laying there with his skull caved in, and the other, sitting against the wall a few feet away, his sword arm gone and his eyes empty.

"If they weren't prisoners, they were allies of the clan," she pointed out the obvious.

Katriona screwed up her face in distaste. "But who would do this? How depraved would any human being have to be to ally with the orc cause?"

"An enemy of Neverwinter." Casavir had joined the brainstorming.

"Or Waterdeep," Brianna suggested. "Maybe they were even behind the emissary's capture."

"Lending their aid to the orcs in exchange for the emissary, you mean?" Katriona's voice was bleak. "But why?"

"I don't know." Brianna let her eyes wander around the room. "And we probably won't stand a chance of figuring it out until we know who they are. Have you looked into that wardrobe?"

Katriona nodded. "Just robes in there, and a locked chest. They weren't suitable for bandages, so we let them be."

Brianna tried to get to her feet, but failed. "Can you bring that chest over here?" she asked.

Casavir could.

The lock was new, and good enough to keep out any nosy orcs, but not particularly intricate. Even with Brianna's hands still in pain and her fingers lacking feeling, she was able to crack it with one of Neeshka's simpler picks. The blade that lay inside brimmed with magic and was certainly worth keeping, but Brianna's interest was held by the small, leather-bound book that was tucked away in one corner of the chest. She reached for it and flipped it open.

"Any clues?" Casavir asked at once.

"There are names," she reported, "but I don't think…"

She trailed off when she realized what she was reading.

"Brianna?" the paladin asked.

"Subject Name: Kyleana of Waterdeep," she read aloud. "Elven female, brown hair, overweight for an elf. Physically weak. Captured near Helm's Hold. Mind snapped after four days of torture. Committed suicide."

Casavir went white as a sheet. "This isn't… "

"There is a whole analysis too." Brianna flipped a page. "About what went wrong, what whoever wrote this should do better next time."

"A torturer's journal," Katriona whispered. "By the gods, how barbaric."

Brianna's mind had already moved on.

"All these people are noted to be from Waterdeep," she realized, and flipped more pages. "And here is the emissary – Issani of Waterdeep. No mention of his death, though."

"Then he might yet live." Casavir's face had changed, from shock right to determination. "We might be able to rescue him and put a stop to the torturing. Find the monster who did this."

"There is something missing though." Brianna was flipping back through the pages. "Not once does the writer give away his goal, his reason for doing all this. I only see mentions of him trying to break them, or to turn them, but not why."

"The blackness of some souls knows no bounds. Does there have to be a reason?" Casavir asked darkly.

She spared him a single look.

"Yes," she said testily. "It's all a bit methodical for it to have no reason."

"So what now?" asked a voice behind them.

It was Neeshka, her eyes dull, her hands covered in Sandrik's blood.

Casavir glanced around the room. "If we are all recovered," the paladin said reluctantly, "we will need to move further. Find wherever they are holding Issani."

"I don't know if I can, right now" the tiefling admitted reluctantly. Her small, desperate tone resonated with Brianna, and she grasped the tiefling by the hand and pulled her down, into a tight hug.

"We are all exhausted." Katriona's voice had lost a little of its edge. "But we are going to die if we don't get moving soon."

"I know," Neeshka told her. "I know that."

It took a monumental effort to get back up and walk into the next fight. All Brianna really wanted to do was curl up underneath a blanket and sleep until it was all gone, until the blood had washed away and the memories of it had faded.


It was a neat little office built into a side passage in which they finally found the man to whom the journal belonged.

It was the same place in which they killed him. The place looked a little less neat after, a shelf now toppled over and books littering the floor.

While most everyone was sorting through the many documents, looking for information, Brianna stood over the body and looked down at the little man whose life they had just taken.

He hadn't stood a chance, and still he had decided to fight them. As though he had been afraid of what might happen if he attempted surrender, and probably for good reason. It was not exactly how she imagined someone who spent their time torturing people – all round cheeks and kindly face, small smile even in death. He had been so severely outnumbered that Brianna had not even managed to strike a single blow before he had gone down, rushed by Casavir and Khelgar and, of all people, Elis.

She wondered what he had offered the orcs in exchange for being allowed to go about his gruesome business in the depths of their lair. They were not exactly known for striking these sort of deals with humans, or anyone else for that matter. Coexistence in the same lair, research in torture. There was no way the little mage had been working by himself on all this. He had not been nearly powerful enough. Even though they had taken him by surprise, Brianna had expected him to put up more of a fight.

"Found something!" Neeshka announced. "Half-finished letter, right here." She waved it around. "It's something like a progress report. Talks about infiltrating Neverwinter."

"My assumption was correct, then," Casavir said slowly. "Enemies of Neverwinter, working to bring her down."

"There is more talk about breaking and turning people," Neeshka added, reversing the page. "Saying how they would have to break the emissary in order to use him to infiltrate. It's all very gross and very snivelling, by the way."

"So he was just an underling," Casavir said, sounding bitter. "The real perpetrator eludes us. Does it say on the letter who it was intended for?"

"L." Neeshka exaggerated the single letter, curling her tongue. "That's all it says."

"We will find whoever is responsible," Casavir announced, and there was no doubt it was a promise.

Brianna's mind dismissed the paladin's thirst for justice. As long as 'L' did not lurk within the cave, she could not have cared less. The emissary was her only goal.

"Did it occur to you that the 'L' might stand for Logram?" Willem asked. "Logram Eyegouger?"

"Doesn't make sense," Neeshka pointed out quickly. "Nobody writes letters to those they live in the same cave with. Besides, I've never met an orc that could read – not that I've bothered asking those orcs I've met. But you know what I mean." She shrugged.

"I found some scrolls," Qara, who had been rifling through the desk, announced suddenly. "They could come in handy. Our dead torturer friend had a sleep spell stashed away… a 'Ghoul Touch' spell and one that gives you waking nightmares. Sounds like he was planning a ton of fun."

"Can you use these?" Brianna asked, skeptically. "I thought you didn't do written spells."

"I did learn a few things during my time at the academy," Qara said contemptuously. "I can read these. There are a few scrolls of diving magic I can't use though. Like this one, it's called…" She pulled a face as she read. "'Infestation of Maggots'. Ew."

Brianna's stomach lurched at the thought of being under the effect of a spell like that.

Can't even express how glad I am that she cannot cast that.

"We need to keep moving," Katriona warned. "Else the survivors will get organized and we may face attacks on two fronts."

"Right." Brianna gave herself a mental slap and stepped away from the corpse. "How much further in do you think, until we meet Logram?"

"It can't be far now. We're deep as can be in the damn mountain already." Neeshka pulled a face.

Not far now.

Brianna clung to the thought like a beacon, trying to motivate her sluggish body and unwilling mind.

Soon, I'll taste the outside air again. Soon I'll have the emissary. Then I can turn my back to these blasted mountains for good. Then… Neverwinter. Sunken Flagon. Home.


Neeshka proved to be right.

Logram was waiting for them not much further, when the passage they followed bent and twisted and finally opened into something like a throne room, massive and lit by over a dozen torches.

Skulls had been carefully arranged as decorations, lining the walls and framing the bone-made throne at the far end of the hall. A walkway of simple woven mats was laid out, from the entrance they were standing by all the way to the throne. The ceiling was higher than in any other cavern they had been in this day.

Logram was not as one might expect, lounging on the aforementioned throne. Instead, he was walking towards them slowly, framed by his guard of eight massive orcs. The war chieftain's stance and the mace in his hand made it more than clear that there would be little talking.

They filed into the room quietly. Somberly. Brianna stepped forward next to Casavir and looked at Logram Eyegouger, hulking body, beastly face and all. But it was his eyes that disturbed her, the intelligence in his eyes, and the fact that he was looking straight back at her.

"Assassins?" he asked then, his eyes still on her. "So Neverwinter sends assassins to face me in battle? They dare not send their grey whelps?"

At this, Willem stepped forward, squaring his shoulders.

"We are not assassins," he said loudly and clearly, trying his very best to represent those of the camp at Old Owl Well.

"Your tribe attacked those who dared settle near the well," Casavir added, approaching as well. "We have come to put a stop to it."

Brianna saw no need to add to this simple and precise statement of their intent, but someone else did.

"And we have come to put a stop to whatever alliance you have forged with those who would torture innocents," Katriona said her bit.

The war chieftain's eyes wandered from end to the other of their little band of soldiers.

"And how will you do that if you're dead?" he asked.

Something tingled in Brianna's mind then, something told her that Logram would not lay open all of his cards like he apparently had. He would have left himself more defenses than just the eight guards crowded around him.

Assassins. He had thrown the accusation at them to cover his own tracks. He would not be fighting fair.

She whirled around, shouted a warning and met an oncoming axe just in time. Sandrik, sluggish due to his injury, was not so lucky. The second of the orcs that had crept up behind them crushed the boy's ribcage with one swing of his flail, and Sandrik was flung backwards, against one of the stalagmites, which he hit with a sickening crack before crumpling to the floor and laying there, very still. Too still.

For one moment, time seemed to freeze as everyone held their collective breaths.

Then the moment passed, and Khelgar hurled himself forward with a battle cry, and Casavir was doing the same. Orc guards crowded around them, out for blood.

Brianna attempted to parry each swing of the orc she was still engaged with, who was trying to force his way past her defenses with brute strength.

And she was tired, so very very tired. Each new swing parried threatened to bring her to her knees, Every time he swung again she prayed her arms would be able to bear it.

I can't do it. Can't do it any more. Too tired. So very tired.

Disgusted, she tried to fight against the voice in her mind. She led a battle on two fronts, one against the orc and one against herself. Her muscles strained under the stress.

Please just let me go to sleep. I am so tired.

Another attack warded off, and she felt herself slipping. Her palm was slippery with sweat, she could barely keep a hold of her sword. She switched hands and kept going.

Shut up and focus, she told herself. You can make it through this. Find an opening. Take it.

She caught the next blow just above the hilt, and her left arm went numb as well. She tried to raise her sword to counter him, but she was sluggish and tired, so tired…

A fiery missile streaked past her and splashed into the orc's face. He screamed and grunted and flailed, unable to see. She took the gift for what it was and ducked underneath the wild swings of his flail, stabbing at his legs. He fell, and she stomped on his fingers to make him let go of his weapon before she took her sword to his back.

After he was dead, she sank down next to the body, useless, empty. Nothing left. She gave Qara a nod of thanks, and then she watched the rest of the carnage, taking place some distance away, near the other end of the throne room.

Khelgar was fighting, sturdy and stubborn as always, with skill but little finesse. He swung his axe and cried his battle cries, and Neeshka moved with him in the shadows and used the distraction of the dwarf's opponents to her advantage, to help him. It made Brianna smile to see how well they worked together, after their initial suspicion of each other just after the tiefling had joined them back by Fort Locke. Granted, they still sniped at each other and traded insults round the campfire, but when it counted, they had learned to trust each other well enough. It was satisfying to see.

All this was nothing though compared to Casavir.

Brianna had not had the opportunity before to watch the paladin in the middle of a fight, she had always been too occupied with staying alive herself. Now, she finally understood why the orcs called him Katalmach. He who loses himself in battle.

Because Casavir had lost himself. She could see it in his eyes as he turned and brought his hammer down yet again with all of his might. He was lost, and when they had talked he had been too guarded for Brianna to be able to spot the truth, to be able to see that there was something broken behind the clear blue eyes. But now, in battle, she could see it clearly. He was rage, and he was terror, and he was all those things she had not previously associated with the warrior of Tyr the even-handed. Casavir fought like he had nothing to lose. His rage and terror was in every swing he landed, every enemy he slew without regard for his own safety. There was no guard, no defense, only an offense so absolute that the orcs shrank back from his presence.

Logram fell to this absolute offense, eventually. Brianna watched near Qara, who had also sunk to the ground, her magic dry. Sandrik was still a pathetic heap at the foot of the stalagmite, and two more of Casavir's warriors had joined the unmoving bodies on the cave floor. Katriona beheaded an orc with one hard swing of her sword and turned to engage another, already fighting two of her men.

All throughout this, Casavir was driving Logram backwards with powerful swing after powerful swing. His hammer sung, Brianna could hear it all the way on the other side of the cave. She watched as Logram retreated another step, hulking body moving smoothly in blocking whatever Casavir threw at him, but he lost his footing for just a moment, one single moment which was all Casavir needed to lunge, leaving himself completely open as he executed a swing with enough momentum to send the large body of the orc chieftain tumbling and skidding until it hit a wall so hard the entire cave rumbled.

The war chieftain was tough, and the attack itself did not kill him. He took too long to recover from the terrible blow, however. As he tried to clamber to his feet, Casavir reached him and brought the hammer down with finality.

They did not allow themselves much time to grieve. As Katriona reluctantly pointed out, there were still orcs in the vicinity, and they were still in danger.

"Do not let their sacrifices be for nothing," she said, but the words didn't console Elis, who had been sitting for the past ten minutes, rocking back and forth clutching Sandrik's lifeless body. Her face was devoid of an expression, but the tears streamed down the girl's cheeks freely.

Casavir had taken a moment to pray over the two men he had lost. Two farmers, he had told Brianna as though she cared to know, who had left their families in order to join his cause. He looked guilt-stricken, and utterly exhausted.

Khelgar was sitting with Willem and Casavir's remaining men, a dwarf and five strong farmer's boys who had lines in their faces that made them look much older than they were. They were sharing a healing potion, passing it around like they might do with a flask of liquor around the campfire.

Neeshka and Katriona were the two people who appeared to have some energy remaining. The tiefling had decided to turn her attention to a locked room off to the side, and when she emerged again, she was busy lugging an entire chest Brianna's way.

"We'll need to divide what's in here in order to carry it out of here," she said wisely. "I'll distribute it, if that's alright."

Nobody minded, or had any energy left to protest, so the tiefling went to work.

Katriona, meanwhile, had vanished through yet another passage and was now returning with good news.

"It slopes upwards again," she reported. "Possibly a shortcut back outside, worth investigating. We might run into some more opposition though, so we should stick together."

Brianna took one last sip from the clay jug she had been drinking from, and staggered to her feet. Her body was close to its breaking point. If there was any further fighting ahead, she would be of little use. Her crossbow was useless in the cramped quarters, especially with her arms shaking too much to let her take proper aim. She knew Qara was out of the fight as well, and they had lost Sandrik, and with him gone Elis was useless – even more so than usual.

Brianna sighed and stumbled over to the still weeping girl. Someone had to get Elis up and moving, it might as well be her.

"We have to move on," she said, carefully, softly, because if she pushed Elis now, the girl would certainly break, and they could ill afford it. "Let him live in your memory."

Elis shook her head, sobbing.

"I can't."

Brianna thought for a moment, and then she reached forward, carefully, as not to alarm Elis, and unclasped the decorative silver chain Sandrik wore around his neck.

"Wha.. what are you doing?" Elis demanded to know. Her lips were shaking. She was nearly gone.

"He would want you to have it," Brianna told her, still in that gentle tone. "He would want you to fight on in his memory. You know I am right. He was a good man, and he loved you."

She nodded, very slowly, and allowed Brianna to drop the necklace into her palm. Realizing the girl would need another moment to pull herself together, Brianna moved away.

"We need to get moving." Casavir was still white as a sheet, but he stood tall and picked up his hammer as though it weighed nothing.

"Yeah, yeah." Neeshka was still busy stuffing things into packs and adjusting straps. "Nearly finished! Oh, this'll make for a nice profit once we are back in civilization."

The paladin gave her a thunderous look of disapproval, and she shrank back.

"I'm just saying," she defended herself, but Casavir was not in a mood to argue. Still looking severe, he strode towards the passage Katriona had indicated, and everyone scrambled to follow after him.