Delire was sitting with piles of paper haphazardly spread across her desk. A few piles had risen high and looked ready to tip over. No order was observable within the chaotic mess, anarchy reigned amongst the stacks. She looked up when Gruzz arrived, trailing Jeria behind. She grunted, tossing the paper she was working on into a basket sitting on the floor by her feet.

"Heard your patrol was cut short and that you brought an unconscious stranger back with you?" She was gruff. The papers around her annoyed her, and the news from Gruzz was likely to add even more to the pile. She sighed and waved at Gruzz to sit down. It was his fault she was the one that would need to explain to the council why an unconscious stranger was lying in their hospital. It was his job, just as it was hers, to explain his decision. Her look said it all to him, he had better have a good reason for his actions, that the stranger was brought back alive and not left there to prevent any danger to the city.

Gruzz grinned, seating himself carefully in one of the flimsy wooden chairs before her desk. He looked back at Jeria, indicating he should do likewise.

"You asking a question or telling me, Captain? I am not so foolish as to think you haven't already got a full description of the person and the fact that Mekior has given her a clean bill of health. Well, at least that she is not a disguised fiend and coming to turn us all into slaves. Don’t think he can wake her up, more his style to put things to sleep permanently." He leaned back, carefully; he could feel the chair creaking beneath him, struggling with his weight. He continued when he felt comfortable and the chair had not broken beneath him.

"What you may not have heard, is that it is Gyv. I reported on her a few years ago when I ran across her and her people. The ones from the House of Souls, with a bunch of freed slaves in tow." He watched Delire, hoping to catch a look of surprise on the face of the canny halfling, but he had no such luck.

"Gyv, huh? I'm not foolish enough to doubt your knowledge or memory Gruzz; you wouldn’t be alive after years as an Outwalker if they weren’t reliable. I’ll give you the courtesy of that just as you don’t delude yourself about my knowledge of what is happening in the city. Still, it would be a long way out of her home territory, far from where they normally operate. I thought her and her band never worked more than five days travel from their base, that they remained close to their escape routes and support. Any idea what happened to her?"

Gruzz closed his eyes, massaging his temple with a free hand. "I reckon she was testing someone with the pin we found nearby; someone who objected to it and then used poison or something else on her. Whomever did so obviously thought that she would remain unconscious and get eaten, die from exposure or be found by the fiends. I doubt they thought we would find her. Few know where we are, and we work hard to keep it that way.”

He closed his eyes, his hand briefly shading them. “It fits the facts we have. Mekior says she is free of taint. She has no obvious wounds and would have been dead if we had not found her. If we hadn’t found her, no doubt some of the local wildlife would have. She would make a good meal for a family." He sighed, bringing both hands in front of him, inspecting his fingers as he continued. "We have another problem though, unrelated to Gyv, and it's a biggie. Not with the outside and its factions, but an internal one. Mekior. He and his fellow Fiend Hunters are going to have a hard time with Jeria. They are all bloody obsessed with killing fiends, and they don't seem to want to be too discriminating when it comes to half-fiends. It's going to be a problem in the future when they need to trust him."

Delire leaned back, looking at Jeria, rather than Gruzz when she replied.

"You know Mekior's story Gruzz? Let me refresh your memory in case you’ve forgotten." She fiddled with a sharp dagger on her desk, one she had been using to open letters. With her looking at him, Jeria knew she spoke to him, rather than Gruzz even though she hadn’t addressed her words to him. "Mekior grew up in the slums here. Ran with a few of the local gangs and got chased by the guards. There was nothing remarkable, nothing beyond the norm for that part of town, nothing that ranked above mere mischief, just another bunch of kids living in the dark at the bottom of the cavern. No one bothered him or the myriad others like him, clones in the desperation of the starving classes.”

“Anyways, his parents decided they had had enough of poverty. Somehow, his father got hold of a shipment of iron weapons, real cold iron weapons. Instead of earning a few coins by turning them over to us, as is the law, he decided to peddle them elsewhere, try for the big bucks. He left the city with a cart full of weapons, and his wife and son riding alongside. Yeah, lots of others that want weapons that can harm the fiends, and never enough that have the ability to materials to produce them.”

“The inevitable happened; he took a path that no one had checked in an age, heading deep into the darkness between here and Fort Livian. He wanted to avoid officialdom and the confiscation of his ticket to wealth. In the darkness they were found, and not by the officialdom they were trying to avoid. They were found by fiends, running one of their own patrols, trying to ferret us out." She paused, letting the facts sink in: captured by fiends smuggling weapons designed to hurt them. "Mekior saw his parents punished. His father faced torture over the period of a week before he died. His mother, abused and used by the fiends during that week, then suffered her own fate at the hands of the torturers, though she did not last as long as his father. The brutal treatment of the fiends in the week before had weakened her, left her body already broken. It was Mekior's turn next. He has never spoken about how long he survived or what was done to him; nor about the period before his torture, nor the time during his torture. Mixed group of Outwalkers and fiend hunters found the group. They organised an attack party and he was freed, a by-product of the attack since no one knew he was there. Mekior was freed, and the remains of his parents brought back. Not that much remained, they had been part of the menu while Mekior was being tortured. During the conflict with the fiends he came close to death. The sadistic nature of the fiends meant that in order to increase his suffering, to increase the length of time in which they could torture him, they had not inflicted any gross injuries upon him, just myriad small ones designed to inflict maximum pain. Undoubtedly death would have come, but no time soon. They used their knowledge of pain to cause him to scream for days, never allowing unconsciousness or the accumulations of wounds to prevent them from enjoying a long session with their victim.”

“I was the leader of the group that found them. I saw his face as we released him, the pure hatred that drove him to beat on the corpses of his captor, the drive that led him to dig graves for what remained of his parents, bury them gently all the while swearing vengeance. I saw the hatred for the fiends on his face, the hatred that turned him into one of the most powerful defenders of our city."

She turned to Jeria, addressing him directly. "He looks at you and in his eyes, he sees those fiends torturing his father, raping his mother, doing whatever was done to him. What happened to him out there in the darkness is locked inside, never spoken of, never told. He will learn to trust you, but only after you have proven yourself to him. It will come in time; I am sure of that. Meanwhile, I will see what I can do to defuse the growing tension. Now both of you go, get some rest. Be back here in two days time." She looked down, ignoring the two, waiting for them to leave.

Gruzz stood, giving her a sloppy salute before walking out her office. Jeria sat, unsure of what to do, until he realised that she really was ignoring him. He, too, left, his salute sharp and perfect. Outside the office Gruzz stood, waiting for him.

"Enjoy the time off, kid. Not too often you get two days furlough after a mere fout days out. Now get out there and enjoy yourself. Just remember, keep your mouth shut and don't correct the rumours or tell anyone any details. This stays with us until we are told otherwise." He put his hand on Jeria's shoulder. "I'm off to see my mother, I'd advise you do the same. Go off, see your family, say hi to your friends, and show off your new threads. He smiled, "it's the first time you get to wear that uniform as a member!"

With a smile and a wave, the half-ogre left, leaving Jeria watching after him. Family, yeah, I'll go visit my dad in some fiend hall, or my mom in the Halls of the Dead. He wandered through the city, watching the people at work, and smiled as the children in the marketplace followed behind pointing at his uniform. It felt good, but the loneliness of his life followed even closer than the children.

When he walked back to the Outwalker’s barracks and to his room, some came out. They shook his hand, introduced themselves, even invited him in. He was grateful, but tired. Smiling at them, at their acceptance he entered his own room lying down to go to sleep. The past few days had been dramatic and drudgery a mix he felt would likely punctuate his life from now on.

***

In the Halls of Healing, Micella leaned over the outsider. Her hands glowed from her healing charms as the energy flowed and removed the last remnants of the bite. She looked down at the sleeping woman and smoothed her hair before placed her hand upon her brow. The healing energy filled Gyv again, flowing through her, touching her in her sleep. She smiled and opened her eyes, and grinned, silently, as she saw a human, not the face of her dreams, looking down at her.

Her mouth felt dry, thick, her tongue a plank of wood not wanting to move, yet she managed to croak out, "Where am I? What is this place?"

Kiarta's smile was broad; her voice echoed the pleasure in her smile. "You are in the House of Healing in Weald Hall. I am Micella, one of the healers here. Rest you are safe here,"

Safe, the thought rushed her head. As she felt herself drifting back into her sleep, she thought she could hear mocking laughter in the background.