Marked, Chapter Thirty-Two

As I look at the devastated interior of my Hidden Lodge, I can see that Nax was rather understating the damage. Whatever came through that wall didn't just break in, it tore most of the wall down. The damage looks to be centered on the wall where the window was, the specific shuttered window that I instructed the minion to shove the meat out of. Dirt, roots, sod, leaves, and rocks are scattered across the wood floor, the table overturned, both trestle benches smashed, and the bath I'd made for Nax was muddied and fouled. The rough beds were largely intact, I'm guessing because I never touched them. "What did this?" I ask breathlessly. It looks like the place was run over by a herd of wild animals.

Nax turns her head towards me. "We will learn. But first... what can you tell me about the creature or creatures who did this?"

Oh, goodie. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut; Nax doesn't seem to grasp the notion of a rhetorical question. Or maybe she does, and is just seizing the excuse to turn this into another of her 'think for yourself' lessons. Still... I DO feel the presence of the Minion tied to the Hidden Lodge. I Manifest Minion twice in succession; no reason to take too much time with all this. "Sweep away all the debris," I announce to empty air. "Execute." 

The work comes along relatively quickly. Whatever magic strengthens the walls provides nothing of the sort to the remains on the floor. The whole while, Chalmer is doing something magical to a mirror. Nax briefly glances in his direction every so often but mostly keeps her attention on the big hole in the wall. 

I spend the time examining the bare, scratched up floor. Long gouges mar the floorboards, crisscrossing in places, the weight of whatever it was grinding dirt deeply into the cracks and scratches alike. I pick up a splinter of wood, and begin digging out the dirt curiously. "Well... it was big," I conclude after a moment. Carefully comparing the scratches, using the splinter to roughly measure the depth of the damage, I add, "it spent a while here, looking. Mostly around where I was standing and where the minion carried the meat across the floor. I think there was only one of them, because there don't look to be enough claw marks for more."

"It was likely a dire or horrid animal," Nax says. "Dires tend to be larger, stronger, but horrids are more foul tempered and, comparative to their size, destructive." 

I almost ask her. But of course, I already know the answer. Instead, I just sigh, standing up from my crouch next to the claw marks.

"Now, come here." She beckons me closer to the edge of the sundered wall, pointing at a spot. "Look at the root here. Notice the steady, smooth curve of the cut, and the discolored portions near the edge of the curve." 

She's giving me a leading answer. "... Okay. So what is that supposed to mean?" I ask after a second. "I feel like I'm missing information you expect me to have." 

She looks at me a moment, before asking, "Other than our journey from my lair, have you spent any time in the wilds?"

I shrug. "I went to camp for a week a summer and a half ago," I answer. 

Nax just sighs, and looks at the damaged surface she just indicated. "This curved mark here tells us that the width of the center most claw is a bit over an inch, and the corrosion of the wood indicates that it was unquestionably a horrid animal of some kind, likely the one which already knew you were here."

"I--" I start to protest, but cut myself off. She said before that I probably hadn't had other options, so I doubt it's criticism. "Sorry."

"Nevermind. It cannot be helped." Nax grimaces. "I cannot expect you to learn and know everything. You are... only human, after all."

"Nothing," Chalmer announces suddenly. "Something definitely happened. I'm not even getting a flicker from scrying."

"Concerning." Nax peers out the hole in the wall. "We shall have to investigate on foot. Taylor, at the first sign of trouble I want you to duck into the Mansion."

"And in the interests of ensuring you stay intact enough to do so," Chalmer adds, putting a hand on my shoulder, "let's get you some protection."

For a moment as he says this, the first thing I think is, 'I need an adult?' but he mutters a few words and I can feel the magic hit me. It's hard to describe, the fuzzy buzzing sensation as I see dark scales sprout from my skin. He snickers at the expression on my face. "Just getting started, so relax."

---

Three spells later, Nax and Chalmer deem me well protected enough for us to leave the shelter of the damaged Hidden Lodge. "So what all did that do?" I ask. 

"Quite a lot, really," Chalmer replies. "Dragonskin to enhance your physical protection and resistance to corrosives, since Horrid beasts are verified to be in the area, Protection from Arrows and Mage Armor for additional defense against physical attack, especially at range, and a Magic Circle Against Evil to protect all three of us, as long as we stick close to you." He grins at me. "You should be secure against most threats, bandits included." 

"How, uh... how long does it all last?"

"Close to two hours for the dragonskin and magic circle, the others should last till after nightfall." He cracks his knuckles. "My standard for myself when I suspect a fight brewing, minus a couple spells." 

I frown. "But what about yourself?"

"My Lady told me what the situation was when she woke me, so I prepared accordingly. I have my own defenses, I promise." He pats my head condescendingly. "Adorable of you to be worried, though."

"Chalmer, stop teasing her." Nax's tone brooks no debate. "We will be scouting on foot at least until we locate the camp, or what remains of it." She whispers something briefly, accompanying her mumbled words with a few gestures. I notice her holding a tiny object during this little ceremony, but she tucks it away before I can get a good look at it. "Chalmer, you will be in the lead. I will take up the rear. Taylor, you will remain between us at all times." 

Chalmer nods, and after pulling a long staff from a pack that clearly shouldn't be able to contain it, steps out into the morning sun. I follow, looking over my shoulder as Nax brings up the tail of our procession. Her eyes are in constant motion, taking in our surroundings with almost no attention spared for anything else; the hyper alertness both unnerves me and makes me feel guilty, like I'm making things harder on the both of them. During our trip from her lair she'd been aware of our surroundings, but it had had a casual sort of feel to it. Now, she's tense. Vigilant like all our lives depend on it. And the difference scares the hell out of me. 

We don't march for long; Chalmer stops us after thirty minutes or so. "My Lady, ahead." He points slightly to the right of straight ahead. At first, I have a little trouble discerning what he's pointing out to us, but then I see a bit of motion, a flapping flutter of cloth. 

"I see it. Proceed with caution, and keep your eyes open, the both of you."  

The grasses and scrub masks the contour of the land to a degree, so it's almost a shock when we crest the rise and get a look at the remnants of the dozen or more shredded tents strewn across and partially buried in torn and churned ground. A charred mound of ash and flecks of charcoal is slightly windswept, but through the ash I can see something that looks like a white, splintered stick with a blackened core. I find myself staring at it, my mind quailing at the slow realization that it isn't a stick at all, but a piece of bone. Probably, given its presence in the midst of all those ashes, a human bone. 

"Whatever happened, there were survivors," Chalmer notes grimly, nudging the piled ash with his staff. It's almost a relief to me, as I desperately focus on the staff rather than the pile. 

"Survivors, but seemingly in a hurry," Nax adds, circling the pile dispassionately. "Barely any attempt was made to salvage these tents, and the pyre was a pile, not a frame." 

"Uhhh... what does that mean?" I ask. 

"When building a funeral pyre, a constructed frame allows the bodies to be burned more comprehensively," Chalmer answers. "They just piled the bodies up over a bunch of wood. Which is why things like that happen." 

"Things like-" I begin, until I follow his gaze to a length of bone, clearly having been gnawed, along with drag marks in the dirt even I can decipher indicating a larger mass has been dragged off. I feel my stomach churn and I turn away quickly. 

"I apologize, Taylor," Nax says abruptly. "I forget sometimes that you are... a child, yet." 

"This is awful. What happened?" I ask, still looking away. 

"There is little way of knowing yet. We need to inspect the area further." 

I look back in Nax's direction despite myself; she's crouching down next to the ashes, stirring them about. Now that I've got an idea of how the ashes scatter, I can see that the pile had already been sifted through, probably by predators after it all burned out. The slope of the outer edge is different, less orderly, as weird as it sounds to say. The core pile, I can see, had a more square shape to it. It might not have had a frame, but... "They had the wood neatly arrayed," I mutter. 

"Yes." I hadn't realized Nax could hear me, but I shouldn't be surprised by it at this point. "It is difficult to guess how many bodies there were before the scavengers got here. I believe the pyre was set four days ago. For logical reasons, no longer than that."

"So then... barely after we left?" Chalmer asks. 

"Assuming the time differential was steady, yes." Nax's eyes suddenly focus on something, and she reaches down, picking up a bone from the pile that looks like a femur. "... Chalmer, look at this."

Chalmer walks over to examine it with her, and after a second I too get closer despite myself and the whole gruesome spectacle. Nax brushes away ash that clings to the bone, and I can see what looks like grooves dug into the bones in uneven, ragged paths. 

"Those aren't bite marks," Chalmer comments. 

"No, they are not," Nax confirms. She looks at me a moment. "Taylor, you seem to have recovered from your shock. Good. Can you withstand examining this scene any closer?"

I still feel a little queasy at the idea of handling a recently dead person's thighbone but I nod. I hate the idea of being girly about it all. "I'll try."

"What do you see here? Think about it carefully. Describe the damage to the bone, all forms of it."

"Well..." Think of it as a plaster cast. An object, not a person. Something like a dinosaur bone. "It, um... it's split on one side... the outside of the leg. There's what looks like scratches or gouges out of the top near the ball joint. The whole bone is blackened and charred." I look at Nax expectantly. She's watching me, however, and says nothing. I look back at the bone. "But there's something more, something you see that I'm missing. Okay." I look closer, hesitant to touch it. No, stop being girly about it. I grit my teeth and reach for the bone. 

Nax hands it to me. The feeling of it is chilling; lighter than I'd have thought, the ash and char almost chalky feeling on my palm. The lengthwise crack in the shaft under the pad of my thumb is sharper than expected, although not painfully so. From this close I can smell the charcoal scent, and I grimace as part of the carbonizing flakes away in my hand, leaving pale bone visible beneath it. 

I almost give it back to her, except I realize that the grooves remind me of squirming. Like pictures of earthworms in soil, or something. "It looks like... worms?"

"Yes. It appears that the damage was done while the individual was still alive, too." She runs a gauntleted fingertip over the twisting grooves, crumbling a bit more of the charcoal. "The funeral coals and ash are burned into the indentations. The worm tracks occurred before the fires."

"That... doesn't make sense," Chalmer says after a moment. "A swarm of vermin would be understandable, but the damage would be all over the body evenly, not localized in such a small section."

An autopsy, I suddenly realize. This is like an autopsy. And just like that, the whole process stops feeling quite so ghoulish to me. 

"Matters would be much simpler were there any bodies intact enough to consult," Nax grumbles irritably. 

I look at Chalmer questioningly. 

"There are spells that can tap into the knowledge that a dead body personally knew or witnessed," he says, brushing aside more ash. "They're tricky to use effectively and limited in scope, but useful spells all the same."

I don't really know how to feel about that. "So you can, what. Talk to dead people? That's..." So unfairly lucky. I'd give almost anything to be able to talk to Mom again. "... weird." 

"It's not really a conversation, more like very limited interrogation, actually. You're not talking to them so much as interrogating, and they tend to be cryptically concise." He picks up a bone and eyes it critically. "My lady, this one appears to be a rib. And it's worm eaten through right here." 

The bone is no sooner handed over, but Nax's expression becomes grim. "... Left ribcage, sixth row. Cardial wound..." 

"You believe the worms did this?" I ask. 

"We are leaving. Now." She stands up from her crouch, taking my arm and gently but firmly leading me away. "We must get far from here. Chalmer, bring the bones." 

I look back at Chalmer, but he's already following orders, glancing around anxiously. I clear my throat. "Should I use the Mansion?"

"Yes," Nax says, "but only long enough for Chalmer to study the target location."

"Um..." Target location? What does that mean?

"We're not searching for further signs of Muckertown, my Lady?" asks Chalmer.

"No,"she answers, shaking her head. "There is no time. We must make our way to Greenheart and the Wardens without delay. After, we depart for Argonnessen."