The inquisitor grabs a torch from a nearby soldier, brushes past Joshua and rushes down the cellar before stopping at the landing, an open door in front of her. In the torchlight, she sees one of the soldiers standing limp, a wet smack and groan coming from him. The body is pulled to the side and lowered, revealing the massive toothed maw of the yanir. It’s body consisted of a thick, straight torso, limbs twice as long as its body and gangly. Its fingers were long and ended in sharp claws, one of which was holding the soldier up by his throat. It’s four eyes embedded into its skull peered maliciously at the inquisitor, the creature’s lanky, thin hair falling around it.
Dropping the soldier to the ground, it stood up to a low crouch, it’s head brushing the stone ceiling. Reaching through the door, it grasps the portal of the door and slowly moves its way through. The inquisitor thrusts the torch into the yanir’s face before turning around and flying back up the steps. It screams and tears at its face, trying to brush away the burning ash, its skin blistering heavily.
She hits the landing and yells, “Prepare yourselves, it’s a yanir! Royal soldiers, surround the sides of the cottage, throw the furniture outside. Mevan, Joshua, Valerie, prepare yourselves!” As she speaks, the yanir thrusts its arms to either side of the hatch and pulls itself up and out of the cellar, snarling. Turning its horrid visage to the soldiers surrounding it, it screeches and grabs the nearest one. He screams as he stabs at her limbs before being ripped apart by the creature. He tries to gurgle a bloody scream, still stabbing at the creature before going limp and dropping his sword to the ground. The yanir throws the top half of the body at the soldiers on the far side of the room before being charged by a group.
The screams of men and creature filled the air as the inquisitor rushes forward and stabs upward into the yanir’s body. Mevan howled deeply as his body changed, his arms becoming that of a bear and his face the muzzle of a wolf, his eyes ravenous and deeply yellow as he charged the yanir from the front. The yanir swats the inquisitor aside, her shield taking the brunt of the force while she backs away quickly, hitting the wall heavily.
The creature takes Mevan full force, slashing, clawing and biting each other, before he grabs a hold of it and throws it against the wall. Joshua’s barbed arrows thud into the yanir’s body and one of its palms, pinning its hand to the wall. From its side, Valerie slips her knife into its side. Before she can slash with her short sword, it yanks its hand from the wall, grabs Valerie and throws her across the room where she crashes and lays still.
The yanir faces back to Mevan and kicks at him with a large foot, its arms pushing against the wall. Unable to dodge or catch the foot, his chest makes a sickening crunch as he’s thrown to the ground, howling. The creature scuttles along the wall killing each soldier too slow to get out of its way. The royal guard captain body slams it before attempting to slash at its neck. The yanir grabs his blade, yanks it out of his grasp and cleaves him in two. It passes by the hearth and smashes one of the windows, reaching through to pull itself out.
Before it can pull itself fully out, Mevan moves forward with the inquisitor, grabs it by the legs and pulls it back through, the glass gashing open the creature’s skin. The inquisitor shouts out to the remaining soldiers and rushes with her blade digging deep into its foul torso. The soldiers move forward, screaming as they rush at it, slashing and stabbing. The creature reaches for soldiers and tears apart what it could reach, many of its efforts stopped by Joshua’s arrows tearing into its palms and joints.
Mevan continues to heave it through the window, before throwing it to the floor heavily. As he steps forward its arms dart forward and its hand stabs deeply into his chest, claws reaching through his body. He coughs blood from his muzzle and bites down hard onto the hand, grabbing onto its arms with his massive paws to stop it from moving. The inquisitor shouts at Joshua as she moves forward and slams her sword into its other hand all the way to the hilt, blade biting deep into the stone, before slamming into it with her shield to keep it from biting or getting up. Joshua moves forward from the door to the creature’s head, pulls back hard on his bow and looses a barbed arrow between the eyes of the creature. It gnashes its teeth a few times, before its massive body stops moving entirely, maw gaping.
Mevan pulls its hand from his chest, then gasps as his body changes back painfully. Blood splatters the floor as he drops to his knees, breathing harsh and ragged. Joshua comes up next to him and helps move him back while the inquisitor went over to Valerie. She checks to see if she was still breathing, and finding a pulse, picks up the unconscious form into her arms. Taking stock of those remaining, she counts four of the soldiers who had survived, the rest of the cottage was awash with blood and gore, bodies both headless and torn apart into pieces.
The inquisitor sets Valerie down outside in the snow against the wall of the cottage, gently probing her head, neck and back. Finding no damage other than a gash on the side of her head, she unlatched the veil on one side then lifted the hood back just enough to be able to treat the wound. She washed it carefully with snow, Valerie’s uncovered medium, goldenrod hair matted with drying blood and sweat. Finding the wound was no longer bleeding, the inquisitor took a small jar from her belt and lightly smeared the wound with a plaster she had made herself from herbs. She carefully pulls Valerie’s hood back into place, latching her veil onto it.
Placing her cloak around her, she reenters the cottage and moves to Joshua and Mevan. An empty jar sat next to Joshua, Mevan’s chest wound sealed but heavily scarred. His breathing had become mostly steady, and he seemed to be mostly conscious. Joshua looks up at the inquisitor and nods, before returning back to poke at the healing flesh of Mevan. She puts a hand on Mevan’s shoulder before moving to the four remaining soldiers.
Two of them were gathering personal effects from the piles of bodies, while the other two were moving their comrades’ bodies to the center of the room, swords on their chests and hands gripping the sword hilts. For the ones whose rigor mortis was too set or who were in pieces, the soldiers arranged them in a way to show dignity. They went on their grim tasks silently, acknowledging the inquisitor.
One of them, an older soldier, finishes taking the last personal item from the bodies he was working on and works his way toward the inquisitor. He salutes and says, “Ma’am, we’re read’eh teh ligh’ tha fire, jus’ gotsta git Yorge’s body down in tha cellar thar.” She nods and responds, “Are you the highest ranking of your troop?” The soldier nods curtly. “Ah’m a sergean’ lady inquis’tor. Ah’ll be takin’ ova from tha cah’ain.” “Very well, as soon as we can move on, we’ll leave,” she responds.
She steps away from the sergeant and moves back toward the hatch, sergeant in tow. Relighting her shield, they step carefully down the stone cellar steps, coming back to the door. Stepping through the portal, the inquisitor looks around while the sergeant carried the body back up the steps. Hanging from the ceiling were body parts, some seemingly having been snacked on for a while, others freshly cut. Moving into the cellar, she finds the freshest one, its clothes in the process of being ripped away.
The head was sitting next to it, a look of horror filling its lifeless eyes. Pulling a parchment from a pocket in her jacket, she unfurls it and looks between the drawing and the head. Seeing it to be a match, she searches the clothing and comes away with a simple iron key. The design inside its circular head was one of a crow, sitting as if on a log. She pockets the key and grasps the head by its hair before taking it away up the cellar steps.
As the hatch slams closed behind her, she moves toward the yanir’s corpse. Taking out her knife, she digs it deep into its chest, slicing down through its bones. Grasping either side of the incision, she rips open the chest cavity and looks inside. Runes carved along the ribs and spine were etched crudely deep into the bone. Without a word, the inquisitor left the body behind, her sword still stuck into its hand and the stone floor.
As she exits the cottage, she notices Joshua holding up Mevan a few meters from the door, his eyes and face neutral. Mevan himself seemed to be breathing fine now, but obvious exhaustion and pain shuddered along his body. The inquisitor kneels down in front of Valerie and, wrapping her better in the borrowed cloak, picks her back up into her arms and moves toward the other two. The four soldiers were waiting outside, the sergeant placing the last soldier’s item into a large sack with the others.
He lights a torch, walks toward the cottage and throws it into the darkness, illuminating the bodies within. The fire catches onto oil that had been poured on and around the bodies. Flames engulfed the corpses, and the yanir’s lifeless maw almost seemed to be silently screaming at the searing flames. The blaze would rage for a few hours, as the oil they used was special, meant to be a cleansing fire for the deceased to find their way to the embraces of their gods.
They watch the fire rage for a short time, before turning away. Snow begins to fall lightly from the canopy above as they slowly move their way back to the horses left behind.
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