The Ghost's Crusade

X: Akkali

The silver mines were half a day's lazy trek from the gates of Baedorn and happened to be the furthest point away from the city-state that still remained under its control. Her previous trips to the area had been limited to the city itself, but Akkali had heard enough from the Enkiri working the mines in those days to be familiar with the basic layout of the outlying lands. At the time she had been gleaning every bit of information possible about the Shalewarrens in case she decided to make her escape northwards instead of south towards the Wall of Haren. She had no idea at the time how useful the information would prove to be.

As they drew nearer to the shaft entrance there were obvious signs of a chaotic exit made by those at the mining camp. Pickaxes and shovels, both quite valuable implements to those whose livelihood was digging, had been strewn everywhere without thought for their care or whether or not their owners would be back to claim them. Bedrolls had been left behind and pawed over by scavengers, pots had been abandoned to boil away untended over long-dead fire pits, and carts had been left upended wherever they had wound up rolling to a halt along the short rail line out of the shaft.

Akkali's nose prickled from the stink of the place. She had an inborn aversion to the unnatural and the mining camp was rife with the foul odor of espiri magics. It was an old reek, and none of the foul life-bending spells had been cast in the area for some time, but it was a lingering one, like a mold that spread unseen within the hollow walls of a damp house.

Off to her left she could see Tiernan visibly shudder in his saddle as though someone had run an icy finger across the back of his neck. “I think we just found where those corpses have been coming from.”

Drystan glanced over his shoulder towards her. “What say you?”

Hopping off the back of the man's horse she claimed her travel bag and slung it back over her shoulder the moment her feet hit the ground. “I find myself agreeing with the giant zealot.”

The Inferi nudged his horse along to the nearest sturdy tree and dismounted, then tied off the reigns to a low-hanging branch and started taking a cursory walk around the abandoned camp. She could tell from the glint in his eyes that Arathron too was keenly interested in what was left behind and doubted either of the two would be speaking for the time being. Neither of them wanted to risk the Inquisitor sussing out their secret lest he prove himself like the rest of his order and attempt to separate their souls. It wasn't that they were afraid an exorcism would succeed. They were bound together by choice and so no human ritual could undo their bond. It was more that the two of them knew exactly what Akkali would do to anyone who tried it.

“I take it you are familiar with espiri magics then?” asked Tiernan, looking directly at her from his saddle with a piercing, analytical gaze she received from very few humans. Most merely glanced at her, saw she was Enkiri, and dismissed her as soon as they blinked. To be sized up as a valid threat almost immediately was a novel thing; usually she had to puncture a vital organ or two before anyone outside Antenox took her seriously.

“I was the slave of an Oratio who enjoyed toying with people he considered lesser beings—anyone not an Oratio themselves when in his more conservative moods.” She bit back the snide remark that leaped to the front of her mind first and in lieu of her growing respect for the man finished, “I know a thing or ten about them, yes.”

Tying his own horse off near Drystan's the Inquisitor dismounted and removed his saddlebags, then draped them over a fallen log and pulled out a thick red leather-bound book along with a surprisingly fancy self-inking pen. He quickly flipped to the first blank page in the book, roughly halfway through, and began jotting down a long string of words Akkali really didn't care to inquire about.