This was how empires died? With people tending to their fields and a bountiful harvest? Smiles were rare, true, but how dare these people to live their lives. How dare they ignore the tide of darkness sweeping the land. How dare they not picking up a weapon for their home.

Simue turned, bitterness carved into her face. It was not what she had expected. The Fallen Empire was...alive. True, she had only taken her small groups a couple of dozen miles inland, but the coast had been peaceful. Peaceful!

How was that even possible? The Wyldlings had been here, that much was for certain. She had been taken here, near Westhaven, along with...Zora. Barak Bloodbraid had commanded thousands of Wyldings and had been well on his way to storm the walls of Westhaven, when Simue's life had been turned upside down.

Not a trace of them now, not here in the countryside, anyway. Just peasants doing the harvest. How was she to contact the resistance, when there were no enemies to fight against? They would not be here. Even the old spots of Simue's own group would have been deserted by now.

She ducked behind a tree for cover, gliding from shadow to shadow towards the mill that stood amidst the fields and villages. Mills were important centers of wealth for every group of villages. It was where the richest man in the county lived, usually. It would be the position to take if you took anything at all. The peasants needed the facility and the miller had the harvest of every peasant go through his mill at one point or another. Easy to count the taxes, easy to grab the profits, easy to control the peasants.

White knuckled, Simue gripped the branch she had pulled out of the way to get a better view. Damned be you in the Evercold Hells, dead gods! Damn you! She gritted her teeth, sinking back into the shadows she had come from.

A man. Sweaty, fat, and covered in flour heaving bags onto the back of a wagon. A miller, a scene so normal and expected...it hurt.

Traitors...they are traitors, every last one of them...

Were they, though? Collaborators. Slaves? Where were the rotten Wyldlings? Where was the darkness?

Call them collaborators. Call them slaves. Call them traitors. Names do not matter...Vengeance does. They are guilty...by what they did or even worse...what they did not do...

Simue gritted her teeth once more, the pain in her cheeks a welcomed feeling by now. She felt the cold steel of her daggers pressed against her forearms and ankles, the weight at her side. Calling her, beckoning her.

Her mind screamed: How dare they live a normal life? How?

Her men watched her with careful apprehension as she returned. They had picked up the signs of anger and frustration but did not dare to ask the necessary questions. Simue just nodded her head west, towards Westhaven, and the small group of warriors left the village, unseen and unheard.

How was she to fill the bottomless pit of rage in her heart if there was no enemy to find?

You found them. They were right there, a step away, vengeance waiting for them with dark wings, the otherworld was readyand yet you denied me my due. You hurt me. Hurt them instead.

Simue's head sank down a notch as she led the way through the fields and cultivated forests of the west coast. I have let you down. I am sorry.

Don‘t be sorry. Be better.

[Love beyond the Grave] burned a hole in her heart, as she felt the vengeful spirit fading away; And yet Simue’s love still was true, as little as was left of Zora.

Don‘t leave me again, she thought, tears burning behind her eyes, yet never falling. But the ghost of her loved one stayed silent.

It took another two days for them to find the first Wyldling, and he was not alone. Fate, as much as cunning, had led them to their hated foe. It had been true, always had been and always will be: Follow the wealth.

The walls of Westhaven were close, right around the corner was an incline you could see above the forests and hills right towards city and sea, and yet the silence of the forest around the defile they were huddled in the bushes around was almost tangible.

That was the Empire. Calm and cultivated countryside with very few populated areas, but those areas were massive and dense. It did not matter how close the walls were. Just a hundred yards past them was the wilderness, or what passed as wild in this tame a region, and most of the city dwellers never put a foot outside of their city.

They had followed the flour. The wagons creaking under the weight of the milled wheat, heavily burdened, on their way to fuel the war. That was what Simue assumed. Grain and flour, the oil for the war machine, no matter where you were coming from. And as sure as dawn, the Wyldlings came to escort their riches.

Now they were here. Coming up through the forest where the baron of Westhaven used to hunt. But they were not alone.

Humans accompanied them, regular soldiers you would expect in any lordling army, holding the shield walls and gates. Footsoldiers. Cheap armor, cheap weapons, and a foul mood. But they wore the white and green tabard of Westhaven, the stag of the House of Tymore crested on their shoulders and shields. The last time Simue had been here, the old Kasimir Tymore had been baron of Westhaven and the first Sealord of the empire.

It was unthinkable, to imagine the man a traitor. But why had the crest not been changed, why was the color of the tabards still the same?

Stop thinking. Let go of your thoughts. You want what I want. And I want those traitors dead.

Simue nodded meekly, looking around for her group of fighters lying in ambush. They were hardened men, tempered through overcoming their personal torments and tormentors. The levels would follow. Five human soldiers and two Wyldling warriors were with the wagons, maybe the peasants would fight, too. Ten men were hiding with her and surprise would be on her side. And surprise was all Simue needed to decide a fight with a well-aimed stab.

The arrows her two [Hunters] released on her command were still in the air as she appeared next to the Wyldling, turning around his back. She slit his throat without even looking, already whirling around and throwing one of her heavy and weighted throwing darts into the face of the next.

Yes. Yes! Show them. Show them what it means to lose and suffer. Make them feel what you feel!

Simue did not rage. Her hatred was cold, simmering and seething but silent - And all that much more terrifying. She danced through the fumbling and stumbling soldiers like a whirlwind of shadow and blade, stabbing, slicing, dodging, and creating chaos wherever she went. She did not kill again. She maimed and crippled, cut tendons, and bled them dry. [Death of a Hundred Cuts]. Her mightiest Skill.

Soon...soon. Zora hungered in her mind, no trace left of the kind and humorous women that once was. Nothing but hunger and rage. Now!

[Vengeance Is Mine], her companion Skill, activated once enough blood had been shed by the countless ghostly blades of Simue, and immediately the soldiers and the remaining Wyldling started screaming as Zora, the vengeful spirit, her eternal lover, took her revenge on those marked by the cuts.

“Nothing more, just flour.“ Farley said, one of the [Hunters] that had come with Simue to the Fallen Empire. “But it is a lot. Do we bring it back?“

She looked up. It hurt...the way they looked at her. Maybe respect, maybe understanding, but there was fear as well, satisfaction and reverence. And worst out of all of the looks: Pity. They did not understand. They all had lost everything, it was the reason they were here, after all, they all were looking to fight and pay some of the pain back. But no one had as dead a gaze as Simue.

Zora was silently purring in her head. Fed up, drunken on the blood of the fallen. It hurt, those moments of bliss. When she was calm and happy. A reminder of things that once were, now never would be again. Small moments of remembering a smiling face and a warm embrace. So little, so insignificant....and yet worth all the rage and pain she caused in between. It hurt to be hurt by her, but not to be loved and needed would be worse. So much worse.

Simue patted her bag for the notebook and the coal, a wagonload of flour was worth more than gold for the people back in Ravenport. They should bring it back, at least stash it away safely to come back for it.

But before she could write anything, a raspy, female voice cut through the forest.

“Hands up! We have bolts with your names on them. Just give me a reason!“

Out of the forest, ragged men and women came, holding all sorts of weapons, among them crossbows trained on Simue and Simue alone. The rest had pitchforks and spears, cleavers, and swords.

“We saw you. We do not know you, but you seem to have taken what we wanted to take. Which brings us to an impasse.“

Simue kicked Farley, her hands still in the air. He nodded.

“Simue here is our leader, she is mute. They have taken her tongue. She wants to write something.“

“Easy there, wildcat, we saw you fighting. We have our eyes on you. No quick movements, or you will get peppered like a pig on midsummer's day.“

Simue nodded and slowly, very slowly wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to Farley, all the while holding eye contact with the woman that had spoken and still was aiming across her crossbow bolt at Simue.

“She writes: I don‘t care. Take the flour. Bring us to your leader.“ Farley read out.

The woman took the crossbow down, raising one bushy eyebrow. “That is something an assassin would say.“

Simue scribbled something else. Farley shot her a questioning look, swallowed hard, and read: "Well, guess what I am then."

The [Vengeful Assassin] held her breath and closed her eyes for a second as she tumbled through the Otherworld, where the ghosts clawed for the warmth of the living, appearing right behind the woman through the power of her [Ghost Step]. She had learned to never open her eyes in that...other place.

Her cool blade was pressed against the neck of the woman in an instant, it had been so quick, she still was inhaling for her surprised scream.

Carefully, Simue took her blade away, turning it around and holding it for the woman to grasp. As she looked into the widened and shocked eyes of her, Simue smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging way, nodding for the woman to take her blade.

“Just take us!“ Farley nervously yelled from behind. “We are friends.“

The name of the woman with the bushy eyebrows, well in her forties, was Brandy, and she indeed belonged to a larger group, hidden away in the forests they now were in the process of dragging the wagons through.

Not many dared to lay eyes upon the silent woman in the back, no one dared to speak up. But there were conversations between the men from Ravenport and the ... bandits? Resistance? Whatever this group was.

One of those conversations happened between Farley and Brandy, ending in the burly woman shouting out: „Where is the war? Are you blind or stupid? Darkness has taken the land from the coast to the mountains. Where were you, living under a rock?“

There was more shouting, but it died down as if all of the shouting people instantly had lost their energy. Simue had stepped up.

Show me. Show us. We need to see. Small letters on a crumpled piece of paper.

Fearful grimaces were shown all around, not just because of her, but because of the place she wanted to see. But she was right here, in stabbing distance, the horror of the darkness was over there. And thus not as threatening.

The woman nodded. And showed them the war.

The way up to the cliffs was littered with spikes and crosses. And the decomposing bodies of their fellow countrymen. The countryside had been clean because everything happened here. Right at the shore, away from prying eyes.

Hundreds, no....thousands of bodies displayed for all to see. Nightmare made a reality. Hell on earth. There was a procession of robed humans between those...signs of death and darkness, carrying naked, tortured, and bleeding men and women up to the cliff. Under the stone jutting out over the water were bloodstained rocks, tainted red even as the waves washed across. Bodies were thrown around by the sea, ground to paste against the wickedly jagged and sharp rocks.

And between those rocks and bodies were shadows and specks of darkness, moving, feeding and growing. Fed by the bodies falling from above. Fat from the flesh of Simue's fellow countrymen.

They all stared, wide-eyed, desperate....unbelieving. This was not war. It was a sacrifice. And those men and women under the hoods, the priests of darkness...were humans. It was unfathomable betrayal and...no further word needed to be spoken.

Kill them. Kill them all.

Zora screamed in Simue's head as she wrote out her exact words.