Darkness had fallen when she came to her senses. Gyv found herself lying on a bed of leaves under a massive oak tree. Beneath her she felt the sharp points of acorns, the tops tinged red, those broken by her leaking a pinkish fluid. She sat up, feeling the burning in her side, the wound not visible in the dark. She felt around the wounded area, noting that it had scabbed over, that the skin felt normal and nothing was swollen.

Have I been lucky enough to escape the taint? What happened when that cursed squirrel bit me? She stood up, her legs sending messages of pain as she placed her weight upon them. Looking down she saw no wounds, it was purely a muscular pain, pain from abusing and ignoring her limits while in a mad panic.

Damn, how far have I run? Where am I? She looked around trying for a landmark, for anything that would point out to her a way home. As she looked, she saw she was on the edge of the forest, the mountains reaching up high nearby.

The forests edge, at least three days travel from where she had been, where she should be. The moon had been a full disk, lighting the sky the last time she had seen it, now it was completely absent. She looked around, noting the details of the landscape, feeling like she was dying inside all the time. Taint. She was tainted. It must have grown within while she had been senseless for so long, for in the starlight she was seeing as well as she could on the brightest of days.

With a deep breathe she pulled out the pin, the one all members of the House of Souls kept, the one that all prayed they would never be forced to use on themselves. It was exceptionally sharp to penetrate even the hide of a fiend though the wound would be only momentary. It pulsed with the power of the poison within, a poison that would kill any of fiendish blood, any who had been tainted, turned away from what they should be to be a toy of the fiends. She sat beneath the tree, feeling the wind, the cool night breeze. She looked over the canopy of the forest, knowing that within its depths stood the safe house and encampment of the House of Souls she had served so long. She thought of her children that would miss her, her husband that served under another commander, of the friends and the freed slaves that treated her almost like a goddess. For a while she sat, tears coming to her face, evaporating in patches of cold. She took a deep breath. A swift movement and the pin pierced the flesh of her thumb, drew a drop of blood, and penetrated her. She waited for the burning, for the fire to consume her blood, boil her skin, pop her eyes as the poison destroyed the taint within, and took her life. Better to die pure than live a slave to the fiends, her last thought as she prepared for the end.

She waited,and the burning came, along with her screams that ascended into the night, carried on the wind to two who sat nearby, awaiting the dawn.

***

"Any idea who she is?" Jeria knelt over the woman who lay unconscious on the ground. She was beautiful, at least in human terms. Tall, with blonde hair that had been cut short, closely cropped to her skull. Her arms were well muscled and marked with scars from where a bowstring would chafe across them as it sent an arrow on its path. Marks from the sun made it look like she normally wore the bracers of an archer, but neither bow nor bracers were anywhere in sight. Her leather armour, coloured green, hid the shape of her body. On her back was an empty quiver, at her side an empty scabbard.

Gruzz stood a short way off, examining the ground and the area in which she lay.

"She has been convulsing- see how the grass and plants in this area have been crushed and broken. Probably from this." He held up the pin, its dull colour almost lost in the dark but easily seen by ogre eyes that can see in the darkest of caves, easily seen by the eyes of a half fiend such as Jeria. "A testing pin, exceedingly rare these, the city guild of alchemists can never produce enough. The gate guards go mad whenever a caravan must be admitted, and they only have one or two pins to test hundreds."

He walked over to Jeria, looking at the woman.

"Get her armour off. Let us see what is beneath."

Jeria gave Gruzz a look, one that spoke volumes about what he thought of undressing a strange woman lying unconscious on the forest floor. Gruzz laughed at him, swatting him on the back, sending him staggering a few paces.

"Don't be foolish, boy. We need to know who she is, what her affiliation is. I suspect I know. What I think I know is from rumour, old tales, half-whispered news told over mugs of ale in the smoky light of a tavern, not hard facts. So now we must do what we must to know. Get that armour off her. If she is our friend, she will thank us. If she is an enemy, it will be easier to kill her."

Jeria bent to his task, carefully untying the laces that bound the armour, the overlapping lengths of leather coming away easily. She smelt of sweat and dirt, as if she had not bathed in a long time. Underneath was a plain brown shift, sleeveless and with an open neck. Around her neck, he saw a medallion that looked silver in the dim light, with some pattern on it in bass relief. He lifted it, trying to get a better view, his own fiend enhanced vision, not the equal of the ogres but still good enough in the dim starlight.

The medallion shone with the reflected light of the stars, the silver in it highlighting the engraving of a man standing with a plate of food outside a house with open doors. He took the medallion off her neck, handing it to Gruzz.

"I thought they were just a story, something to soothe children when you need them to sleep at night."

Gruzz took the medallion, hefting it in his hands, letting it slip through his fingers before catching it again.

"The House of Souls? Nah, they are real enough. The closest bunch we know of is at least a week's journey from here. Not what I was hoping for, but better the real than the rumours, though the rumours are always more fun."

Gruzz knelt, gently turning the woman's face to the light, placing his face close to her mouth.

"I know who she is. Goes by the name of Gyv, a legend in the House. They say she has freed more slaves in the last five years than anyone else did in the fifty years before that." Gruzz saw the look that he was getting from Jeria and laughed.

"I ran into her band escorting some slaves back to safety a couple of years back, when I was till partnered with Mistel, may the Gods grant his soul peace. Now I need to know what brings her out this way, lying exposed outside the forest with a testing pin nearby. I think we all need to know, and no doubt she will be happier to be inside and safe than lying out here as fiend food." He lifted the body heading back towards the cavern and the city.

"Sorry Jeria, but you're going to have to wait to see your first dawn and go on your first patrol. Something like this right by the city gate has to be reported before anything else and carrying her back from here will be a lot easier than dragging her around behind us." Gruzz stopped and looked at the comatose woman. “We could just kill her and leave her here. Most of the cities do not take in those found like this. But I know her, and I suspect we may need to know what she knows.” He sighed, “Yes, we will take her back and let those who object be the ones to come out here next. We need the intelligence she most likely has, and that is worth the risk.”

Gruzz stood and started looking amongst the nearby trees.

“Find some young saplings and chop them with that axe of yours, I’ll stand guard. We will rig up a stretcher to carry her with. Hmm, and don’t forget to cover your mouth and nose while chopping, these trees carry taint and you never know what will come out of them.

Jeria nodded and looked for some saplings amongst the towering trees. Not seeing any he instead attacked some low-lying branches that looked sturdy enough, and long enough, to do the job. He chopped down with his axe and felt the shock in his arms as his axe bounced off, causing him to loose his footing on the wet and slippery ground, leaving just a light mark on the branch.

Gruzz was just shaking his head.

“I said find saplings for a reason. These mature trees have had years of soaking up taint. They need special tools to harm. I am actually impressed you managed to mark it at all.

Grunting as he came to his feet Jeria gave Gruzz a remorseful look, “Sorry, next time I will do exactly as you say.”

“You better. Next time you decide to do something for yourself you may just end up killing yourself. You have a lot to learn, and when you think you are finished, you will still have more to learn!”

Jeria started circling around their encampment, finally finding, and chopping down two saplings of his own height. One had been easy, the axe cutting through it easily, fresh sap leaking at its base. The other had been more resilient, and as it broke a soft red mist of tiny droplets has sprung out. None of it reached him, but he quailed at the thought of what the effects might have been had he breathed it in. Taking the lengths of wood back to Gruzz, he watched as a Gruzz took his rope out and swiftly created a makeshift stretcher.

“I want to be gone before dawn, it is nearly here, and we never enter the city’s caverns when the possibility of being seen remains. Remember that, you only go back in in the dark, and after making sure there is nothing in the area.” With that he loaded Gyv onto the stretcher and nodded at Jeria, “Time to go.”

Jeria watched as Gruzz pushed his way back into the cavern and then followed. He gave one last glance at the sky that seemed to be changing from black to royal blue in the distance and dived inside, to the safety and warmth of the caves embrace, to the protection of the rocks he had known since childhood.