The Slayer's Wrath

A year after the Wyrmerian Wyvern fell, the roads were finally open again. Wagons rolled. Fields showed green. People started saying the Scourge was ending.

On one cloudy morning, the Slayer went south into Corwen, where the border bled into Volkis and the mile-markers were gone. The first village he found had no name left on its sign. Someone had burned the paint off and nailed a red claw where the letters should be. He kept walking.

At the second village, a fawn watched him from under a porch. The boy had a strip of cloth tied around his arm—red, like the sign. He stood up straight when the Slayer passed, tried to look hard, and failed. The Slayer said nothing and moved on.

By the fifth village there were bodies on the crossroads. Goats, antelopes, sheep, a bundled lamb. A sermon nailed above them in thick letters:

𝐒𝐔𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑’𝐒 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒.

𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐒 𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐒 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐇𝐄𝐑.

The Slayer took the paper down and folded it into his cloak. He left the bodies until he could bring others to cut them down with him.

Corwen’s capital, Nastrond, sat in a hollow, its walls black with smoke. The gates were open. The cow guards watched him come and didn’t touch their spears. When you have a symbol to defend you, you think you are safe. The guards wore red claws on their breastplates and smiled with their teeth.

The city was quiet. Not that thick, full silence that comes after snow, but a thin, oily kind that slides over stones and hides noise under it. People moved in twos and threes, eyes down. A doe set a bushel of apples on a windowsill and pulled her hoove back as if the fruits might bite.

In the square, the Slayer found the thing people had been talking about. Chains ran from four pillars into a pit. At the end of each chain was a hook. At the end of each hook was a monster. They’d named it Scylla. It was pieced together from the Scourge’s leftovers: too many mouths, too many eyes, hide like wet bark. It moved in slow, heavy breaths, and each breath dragged the chains an inch and scraped a line in the stone.

“Fed at noon,” a goat at a cart whispered to his wife. “Daily. The mischievous. The wicked. The stubborn.”

The Slayer watched the creature blink. Its eyes were dull. It was not the worst thing in the square.

A bell rang in the tower of the old hall. The sound was clean and bright and did not belong to this city. Cattle in red filed out of side streets and took their places along the square. At their head came a hippopotamus in a robe sewn with gold thread and greasy fingerprints. He carried a staff carved with the Mother’s Circle and a red claw stamped over it. He opened his arms wide.

“Blessed day,” he called. “Blessed day of return. The Mother has sent us her hoof.”

No one answered. The Slayer didn’t either.

“Brother!” the hippopotamus boomed, walking closer, robe swaying. “Chosen! I am Carcharus. I saw you in a vision. You came north in a sea of glass. Fire flew on either side of you. The Mother rode on your back like dawn. I have been waiting.”

He stopped at the edge of the space the Slayer took up. Up close, Carcharus smelled of smoke and sweet wine. His eyes were bright and busy, always searching for an angle. He smiled and lifted his staff a little, a simple move that said I am in charge.

“Come,” he said. “Let us speak where it is cool.”

They went inside the hall. It had been a council house once. Now banners with red claws hung where city colors used to be. A table had been pushed to the center. Pitchers, cups, the scraps of a feast. A young polecat in a servant’s vest moved among the dishes with careful paws. Carcharus set his staff against the table and leaned toward the Slayer like a friend about to share a farce.

“You broke the Wyvern,” he said, soft. “You fell a terror. The world loves you for that. So do I. But evil does not die with monsters, yes? Evil is soft. It hides in children. In mothers. It is tender and it corrupts. We must teach it.”

The Slayer’s face did not change. Carcharus spread his large manuves.

“You see our work in Nastrond. Hard work. Holy work. The Mother teaches us that love is learned in pain. A child who does not cry learns strength. A child who cries must learn compassion. We are building a House that knows this truth. But we need a foundation that cannot be shaken.”

He poured wine and pushed a cup toward the Slayer. The Slayer did not touch it.

“Forty thousand,” Carcharus said, and the number fell like a hammer. “Mothers and children from the heathen lands of Horns and Jaws. Escort them here. You alone could do it. You alone can walk through armies and be greeted as a blessing. Bring them to Nastrond, and we will make a holy empire. We will teach the world to be good.”

The polecat servant, moving too quickly, bumped the pitcher. Wine slopped over Carcharus’s robe. A dark stain spread. The room paused. Carcharus’s smile thinned. The servant froze, eyes huge. He was maybe ten. He had a thin red ribbon around his wrist—one of those scraps that marked the Red Claw’s foundlings.

“I’m s—” the boy began.

Carcharus hit him with the staff. The blow was fast and practiced. The boy fell, knocked into a chair, scrambled, paws up. Carcharus hit him again. Not hard enough to kill. Hard enough to prove a point.

“Compassion,” Carcharus said, breath steady. “Begins at home.”

The Slayer moved.

He didn’t warn. He didn’t posture. He didn’t reach for the cup or talk about terms. He took hold of the hilt at his hip and drew a length of steel that was not only steel. The blade uncoiled like water and then snapped straight with a hiss. It had teeth along one edge and a whip’s memory in its joints. People called it a sword, for lack of a better word. When it rose, the room changed.

The first cut took the staff. The second took the guard to Carcharus’s left. The third split the table and sent the pitchers flying. Great mammals lunged for weapons, shouted, tripped over benches. The polecat curled in a ball under the chair and pressed his paws to his head. Carcharus stumbled back, tripped on his robe, and went down. The Slayer stepped past him, shoulders square, and went through the doorway into the hall.

Nastrond’s quiet broke all at once. Steel rang against stone. The Red Claws who had smiled at the gate ran toward the square. Those on the roofs lifted crossbows. The bell kept tolling, frantic now. The Slayer did not slow.

The whip-sword moved in hard lines. It hooked, tore, shoved, hammered. There were no speeches. There were no prayers. The gang’s red banners fell into the street and were ground thin under boots. When the weapon coiled, it was to reach another throat. When it snapped straight, it was to make space where the crowd pressed too close.

In the market, a doe whose wrist still had a chain on it pointed with that paw and screamed. The Red Claw behind her swung at her with the flat of his sword. The Slayer put him down and kept moving. The female did not thank him. She ran.

At the square, someone loosed a bolt that went wide and clattered on the stone beside the pit. Scylla flinched and then stilled. Carcharus, scrambling, saw the creature and changed directions. He went to the alleys, toward the one thing in the city that could not be bought or persuaded. He slid in blood and struggled to his feet and held up both arm as if the Slayer were a bailiff and this was a court.

“I revoke this land,” he said, voice high. “Let all sermons, visions and titles be revoked. Heed me, brother. We wish for the same truth. We call for a good world. Let me unveil you the truth!”

The Slayer grabbed him by the mouth.

Not the jaw—too easy to dislocate. Not the throat—too easy to crush by accident. He took one thick, yellowed incisor in his fist, thumb on the gum, and squeezed until Carcharus’s words turned into a half-choke, half-whine. Then he dragged him.

Through the wrecked hall. Across the square the gang had used for their trials. Past the chains that had been pulled to keep Scylla where it was. The monster watched with its flat eyes and did not move. The hippo priest beat at the Slayer’s wrist with both paws. He kicked. He begged. He tried to kneel even while being pulled and fell on his face. The Slayer did not answer. His grip did not change.

At the lip of the pit, he stopped. He looked down into the dark where the chain ran, and the clink of metal on stone went down and down. He looked at the beast in his paw, who had painted the Mother’s face on a stick and called murder a lesson. He looked at the city.

Then he let go.

Carcharus tumbled forward and hit the chain and grabbed. He hung there for a breath, robe snagged on a hook. He looked up, eyes wild.

“Mercy!” he croaked.

The chain shifted under his weight. Scylla moved.

The city heard the sound he made when he went under. It was not loud. Those in the square went still. Those in the windows leaned out and then in again. Someone covered a child’s eyes.

The Slayer turned away. He went to the chains and cut them. Scylla made no move to stop him. It lay there, empty, as links fell in a heap and dust rose. When the last chain dropped, the creature slid lower into the pit, heavy and tired, and did not climb again.

The work after that was simple work, which is to say hard. Locks were broken. Doors were opened. The Red Claws who dropped their weapons were bound. The ones who hid were found. The ones who tried to run through the gate met the people from the villages the Slayer had passed, coming with ropes and knives and quiet fury.

The Slayer took the little keys from the commandant’s ring and tossed them to a girl with a scar over one eye and told her to give them to those who could use them. He did not speak of comfort.

“Go,” he said. “Take what is yours. Go.”

The polecat boy from the hall found him in the square again. His vest had torn. He had lost the red ribbon without noticing. He stood with his mouth shut this time and waited.

“Go,” the Slayer said again.

“Will you come?” the boy asked.

“No,” he said. “Keep moving. Do not turn around.”

The boy nodded and ran to catch the line.

The Slayer set the coiled sword point-down between the stones and placed his palm on the flat.

Above Nastrond, the sky went strange. Blue sank to iron. The sun dulled as if a veil slid over it. The clouds started to pull toward a single point over the square, slow at first, then faster, until the whole sky turned like water going down a drain. The wind didn’t come from any direction; it came from everywhere at once and shoved down.

The first drop of fire fell and cracked like a thrown rock. It hit the roof of the Red Claw hall and went through in one punch. Then the second fell, then a dozen more, then the sky opened.

Sheets of red fire slanting down in long, heavy strokes, the way rain leans in a gale. When it struck, it stuck. It ran along beams, pooled in corners, and ate stone the way lye eats cloth. The bell tower tried to ring once and melted at the mouth like wax. The square filled with a red wind that didn’t blow things away—it pressed them flat and then burned them where they lay. Flags went up and vanished.

The chained creature in the pit lifted its heads, made one startled, mortal noise, and the chains snapped in the heat. The links fell like coins and fused into a single glowing length.

The boy saw the Slayer’s shoulders hitch, just once, like the effort pulled something out of him. The sword’s teeth glowed dull red. Lines of light crawled under the skin of his wrist and up his forearm, then faded. He didn’t move his feet.

Fire came in bands, not random. It wrapped the city wall and rolled inward. It left the north road alone—stopped clean at the gate like it had hit glass. Sparks skated across the threshold and died. Heat washed out anyway. The refugees on the road felt it on their backs and picked up their pace.

Roofs went. Then floors. Then the bones of buildings. Stone sweated and ran. The old council table inside the hall turned to ember, then to dust. The sermon boards nailed at the crossroads turned black in a blink and then weren’t there. Windows didn’t shatter; they slumped. Door rings sagged into ovals. A low storehouse tried to hold and folded in the middle like wet bread.

The Slayer lifted his paw off the blade and opened his fingers. The fire bent. It curled toward the core of the city, toward the places where the Red Claws had kept their keys and their books and their food. It left the wells until the last moment, then sealed them with glass. It found the hidden rooms behind the altar and blew the hinges off. It went down into the tunnels where the gangs had stashed people like sacks and burned the air out so fast the flames made no sound.

Someone on the ridge shouted. The column on the road kept moving, heads down. The boy watched until his eyes watered. When he blinked, the city was a shape of light in the bowl, the color of fresh blood and hot iron.

The Slayer’s knees dipped. He straightened. He braced the sword with both paws now, the way a wolf braces a beam that’s trying to crush him, and held the fire on target.

When the fuel ended, the sky cut the stream and the clouds tore apart like cloth. Red threads thinned and snapped. A few last drops fell and hissed into the glowing mess below. The wind came back from the north, clean and cool, and pushed the smoke down the south road and out over the fields.

The Slayer pulled the blade free. He rolled the steel into itself and hooked it back to his belt.

By morning, there was nothing left of Nastrond but scorched stones, blackened bones, and that chain welded into the pillar like a scar.

People who returned later said the Mother came with the Slayer. Maybe she did. The boy only knew the road was open and the city that taught pain was gone.

---

Eni Siverets - Professor of Terregor

The fall of Nastrond in the year 1,861 AA stands as one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the Slayer.

The Kingdom of Corwen, one of the nations most devastated by the three-century-long Scourge, had been left fractured and lawless. In the wake of societal collapse, widespread banditry and warlordism erupted as rogue factions seized the kingdom's ruined infrastructure to prey upon refugees and neighboring regions, the chief of which were the Red Claws.

While the Slayer's campaign to cleanse Corwen of these criminal elements was extensive, his intervention at Nastrond remains the most memorable. The account presented in The Slayer's Wrath is compiled from witness testimonies detailing his timely arrival, the liberation of the oppressed, and the city's subsequent purification.

Although consistent reports describe a mysterious monstrous entity named Scylla and a pit used for executions, no physical evidence of either was found in the aftermath, likely consumed in the conflagration that purged the city's wickedness. This cleansing allowed Nastrond to be rebuilt on a foundation of virtue, and it is my pleasure to confirm that it now thrives once more as a prosperous and peaceful city.