Xunathos rasped as his thin finger ran over his chest, guided by the weak light of the camp. The damage to his lungs was minor, but it was there. Several ribs too. Acceptable, considering most others would be dead by now. He eyed over to Itzil, who righted herself, by now dry. Despite her grumblings, they had hiked through the icy river's shallows to lose the scent of any future hounds on their track. Like any river the Slavians to the south called their own, it was deep, fast and treacherous and had barred a crossing to the other side. So he had summoned the bridge by fusing deadwood into a new whole and rotted it into mulch once they passed. Camp was made not too long after. Now, their dim flame beckoned to the dark and the shadows deepens where its light fails to reach. Xunathos thought his companion in a good mood, if the subdued warbles were any indication. She roasted a rust-brown centipede the size of her lower arm; not an unusual sight in these parts anymore. It snuck up to their camp and hid in their bag. Itzil had smelled its noxious secretions, taken a big stick and beat it to death. Thinking; Animals started and humanoids stopped. One of the many things that had started to go wrong with their world, she said.
"Wrong? Perhaps, just different." Xunathos told them both.
"Who gives?" Itzil swallowed the darkened chitin and flesh. The sharp, bitter saltiness pleased her.
"Peculiar, considering you are..."
"... A thinking, speaking beast?" The tail flicked. "She does not care. She's not safe for humans, yes. Her claws yearn for pretty things to ruin, her nostrils delight in fearful prey, her teeth rejoice over soft flesh. But neither is she one of the side of the animals. They are too small and weak and happy like they are." She stared into miles and miles of shadows behind the campfire and laughed, as if she was in the burning village again. "There is only one place destiny allocates for a Dragons. Dead, under the heels of a conquering hero."
Xunathos' eyes wandered up. "That's the lies we humans tell about your kin. You don't have to conform to their story or play the role they give you." Xunathos tried to catch her eyes, his tone inflected by worry. "You could be better."
The drake blinked for a moment, gathered her thoughts. "She..." Then, her ear finn twitched. Her head turned around. "Did you hear something?" The necromancer shook his head, tried a smile. He had heard nothing.
"You are haunted by shadows. It's just the wind, i am sure."
The great reptilian head turned to him and nodded. She finished off her meal and threw the stick into the cinders, poured odorous tea from her iron kettle directly into the mouth, drank in great gulps, then yawned as she continued. "Spare her your sermons on self-improvement. In the end... Mijira does not care. At all. She never did, never does. She's still alive and free. Nothing else matters." She turned her head, looked at something inside the night.
"But you can not just run forever, can you? You need to have a plan. You gotta have a plan."
Itzil 's head bopped strangely.
"And she has one. She -"
Was cut off. An inhuman cry and the shadows erupted. Ragged, pale men streamed into the clearing, dozens of spears at the ready. Once-human faces leered, ridden with discoloured growths like turning fruits not yet rippened. Beasthood overgrew rotted humanity; patches, cysts and torn scraps of mangy fur, teeth, scales and chitin, scabby-swollen backs and clear bellies, pustules of writhing spawn within that feasted on each other and arms that became claws that became hands that became wings, tentacles, paws, hooves, nails, became arms. Shifting like ruined broil, gently bubbling, endless faces and maws that pushed each other up, down, out, sideways, forward. Xunathos cried out in fear, moved, but was hemmed in by their cruelly barbed circle of pikes; Itzil regarded the snarling assailants as if they were a startled deer that stumbled into their camps.
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"Arms up in the air!" The bark of the cultist was duplicated by the small, half-melted face on his cheek. Xunathos gave a hopeful look at Itzil. Up close, they'd kill him before he could cast a spell. But she perhaps could spew fire again, buy him time for a distraction...
The drake raised her arms, far up towards the night. He sighed and did as her. Laughter from the gathered monsters followed. They leered vacant minds taken by twisted fantasies.
"Look at them! A misshapen amazon and a spindly bookworm. Brittle dirt!"
"No wonder we could sneak up on these civilised dullards."
"Disgusting and vile... Nature's been taken far from its intended course. We must drench them in the waters of our lord!"
"Blood, drool and more! The clay must wetten! The flesh must melt!" One brayed. The chorus rose and joined in, screeching to shake the trees, then died with a raspy hiss.
"Silence, fools!"
The throng parted to reveal an wrinkled yet strong-bodied man, naked but for a decaying deer head fused into his own, in his arms a beautiful women. Crowned by a circle of horns, she mocked the pair with a weak and monstrous smile, only covered by crude scraps resembling small clothes. Itzil stared at her, but was given no attention. The drake moved her face at that; Xunathos did not understand why.
"Thank the Beast and His spirits!" the cultist cheered. "Magnificent new converts! And..." he bowed close to Itzil, all the worms and maggots that crawled through the furless animal's nostrils and eyes visible as he, with yellow, bloodshot stare, breathed his foul musk at her. "...A woman!" He clapped his hands, pulled his wench along. "Don't worry sweet thing... we'll free you from your hardships and unloveable shape soon enough...You'll be like my other lovely assistant..." His lips twitched upwards and backwards to reveal the sharpened, stick-like teeth and a worm of a grin as he disarmed her and pressed the thing onto the soft flesh of his demonic lover. "Another step towards the salvation of this world! One more step back towards paradise!" The rest of the cultists joined him in the exultation, as if he was a howling wolf.
Their leader began to murmur a sleep spell - Itzil interjected. "Let us walk, strong one. We are faster that way. The Empire was on our heels before we fell into your clutches."
The man's skin shuttered. Xunathos saw no spots on him. He was young, despite his body.
"Very well!" He croacked. His lackeys hurried in the plunder of the camp while he muttered phrases of protection against augury and pathfinding alike . They were bound with blindfolds and chains before their captors marched them deeper into the darkness. Xunathos heard their malignant chatter, the click of their steps and the dead leaves that crunched under his boot, the dried twigs that broke when his body brushed against them. Unwilling to just suffer his situation, he plotted escape, reached out with the finer, necromantic senses. He found nothing. There was no entropy here, neither worms, disease, fungi, nor scavengers to consume the things that had ended, no way for the trees that clung to this mockery of life to die. Even the ground was cleared of the dead, surely risen in the service of the beast or gone into the metabolism of the grotesque worshippers. Desperate, he concentrated on the rustle of the breeches and pelts of their kidnappers - and laughed. They lived! The fur scraps, the pelts too, were alive still, souls trapped, forced to endure even when the animals they came from long had been hunted, killed and skinned.
No, there was nothing he could do here. Resigned, he stumbled on, drowsy from the lack of sleep and the heavy, musty air that suffused this domain of the beast. Finally, when the ground beneath his feet changed from lifeless earth to hard stone, he heard the troop part, felt the rope that tied him to Itzil sag. Cold iron was laid around his ankles and wrists, damp stone pressed against his back, a door slammed shut. He sighed and hoped for a miracle from Itzil; nothing else left to do, he fell into a fitful sleep.
