The Ghost's Crusade

Epilogue: Drystan

Unfortunately, Drystan was finding that despite his entitled attitude and need to mention and then complain each time he had mud tossed on his clothing Erenmyr wasn't particularly bad company. This was, of course, based solely on the fact he had only really known the man for three days. The fact that he was Galenfyr's eldest brother was impossible to ignore, almost coming to the point that when they reached the first village marking their entry into Wardenfell Arathron was refusing to speak to his partner so long as he was in the company of the man.

There was just a single inn in Balemoor, but it was the only place which rented rooms before one reached Whiteshire, still a little more than a day's ride away. It was large for a border tavern, the stables were dry and mucked, and apparently it met with Erenmyr's approval about being acceptably warm and clean. After securing for himself a room, since Drystan absolutely refused to lend the man any aid besides the occasional answer of yes, they were indeed still headed towards Whiteshire, he settled himself in front of the hearth of the place and proceeded to continue drawing in his leather-bound book. It was an odd habit for an Oratio to have, he thought, but at least the man didn't wile away his time reanimating the dead or whining about the lack of modern services available in the Oribian for hours on end.

After paying the innkeeper for his horse's feed and his own plate of bread and hot deer stew Drystan took up a seat against the far wall facing the fireplace and pondered whether or not he should try and get himself drunk. He could feel Arathron's loathing like stinging nettles at the back of his mind and it was starting to become annoying. It was astonishing to realize just how passionately the revenant could hate someone merely based on the fact he shared blood with the Oratio who had experimented on their friend for years. Erenmyr obviously knew what his brother got up to in his free time, and the fact he didn't seem particularly opposed to such activities was what angered Drystan the most. If Arathron had his way they would have tossed the man in one of the near-frozen lakes or rivers they had passed and left him to drown, calling the scales of fate even and his need for retribution sated.

Unfortunately they both recognized that, at least for the time being, they were stuck with the man. The Cardinal's message about Knights of the Ordained Father, supposedly the most skilled and most devout of all in the Inquisition, being ordered to kill themselves to cover up a mistake was almost unbelievable. But he had seen what Nocis had done at Nighttyr Keep, and he knew what the man had tried to do when he entered the City using his portal forged of bone, blood, and magic. The first Inferi he had met, Taskmaster Erminhild Coord, had perished in their effort to make sure nothing the man had created would make it into the hands of another capable of reproducing his work.

The thought that someone else was traipsing about Eral hacking Enkiri to pieces in order to make themselves a gateway into the City so they could achieve what they thought would be immortality twisted his gut and ruined his appetite. He forced himself to eat merely because his body needed to but everything tasted like ash. Eventually he fell into a mental debate with Arathron on the best way to dispose of Erenmyr when he lost his usefulness. A few of the methods they devised were enough to rival even Akkali in terms of sheer spite and malice.

They guessed it was around midnight, Erenmyr having fallen asleep in front of the fireplace not even bothering to utilize the room he had rented, when Drystan noticed the Oratio's hunch was moving. With the rest of the tavern's inhabitants long gone off to their own rooms or left for their homes it was hard not to stare at the slow, purposeful rise and fall of the man's back. And it wasn't due to his breathing, as the movement was from side to side, not in and out.

For a moment Drystan thought the Oratio had some sort of demonic growth sprouting from his spine, while Arathron wondered if he had come up with some sort of magical method for attaching a schaden's wings to his back out of some foolish attempt to make men fly. They were both proven wrong when a reptilian nose edged its way out from beneath Erenmyr's arm, followed by a scaled snout and a pair of slitted blue eyes set into a small draconian skull.