“Despite the dangers involved, uninhabited regions like forests were a favorite for outlaws to make their hideout in, where they would remain out of sight of the locals during periods of inactivity. The same dangers that made such hideouts risky were what allowed these outlaws to remain undiscovered most of the time.

After all, the average guardsman was not paid enough to risk their lives to hunt bandits all the way to the uninhabited lands, and given how there were such lands practically everywhere, the outlaws never really ran out of places to hide in.” - Ignacius Blomvqist, Archivist and cartographer based off the Clangeddin Empire

“So, any of you feel like talking now? Maybe about the location of your hideout?” asked Aideen as she rounded up the five survivors of the bandit gang. Along the way, she had also sealed the bleeding they suffered - be it internal or external - so they would not die too soon, but had not healed them any further, not even removing the spear that was still lodged through the torso of the one runaway.

She had started her little attempt at interrogation with the big, ugly one, but the man proved to be far more stubborn and tight-lipped than she had expected. Even as he screamed out repeatedly in agony and even went incontinent several times during the process, he said nothing, even after she reduced him to a twitching heap that barely looked human, still awake and aware of everything and in horrible agony, wishing to die but could not.

“Honestly, I’m somewhat impressed,” said Aideen as she twisted the ugly bandit’s flesh in a way that triggered all the pain receptors in the area and made him twitch violently even as he gave a soundless scream in agony. “I had not expected bandits of all people to have so much camaraderie they’d rather die than talk and betray their comrades.”

“Uhh… that’s not it… Miss…” stammered the leader of the former soldiers even as he winced from the pain caused by his shattered hip bone. The man seemed positively cowed now, especially with how his eyebrow twitched when he saw the condition of the big, ugly man. The same twitch happened when he glanced at his two surviving subordinates, one of whom still desperately held his intestines in his body with his one working hand and the other still crying with a spear through his belly.

“What do you mean?” asked Aideen as she looked at the bandit with a questioning look on her face.

“The big lug there… he has no sense of direction… Miss…” said the scarred man even as he winced in pain once more. He gave a pitying, sympathetic look at the screaming bandit who had gone through hell for the past half an hour and made a gesture of benefaction with one hand. “And we’ve always told him to just keep quiet after he often rambled on unnecessarily before… not that he could give you directions to our base even if he wanted to…”

“Oh,” she said with some embarrassment. Despite her experience working and training with the Death’s Hand in the past, Aideen was by no means skilled or trained for interrogative work. She almost blushed when she realized that she just spent the last half hour hurting someone for nothing. “Then do you know the way?”

“Yes! Yes! I know the way!” said the former soldier in a hurry. The scarred man now looked pitiful, with none of his former ferocity to be found anywhere, and he once again sent a fearful glance at the screaming heap that was his compatriot. “I’ll lead you there myself! Please!”

“All right then,” said Aideen with a nod after she pondered for a moment. Then she took out her weapon and used the spearhead to cleanly slice through the throats of the other four bandits, ending their lives swiftly and relatively painlessly. The filthy one probably never even realized how he died since he had not regained consciousness yet by then.“I guess I won’t need to ask them then. Lead the way.”

Aideen healed the scarred man’s shattered hip and followed him into the wilderness, uninhabited regions mostly avoided due to the proliferation of wild beasts and the occasional monster. The dead bandits she just left next to their makeshift blockade, their corpses still strewn all over the place.

When the merchant caravan she saw in the village passed the area later that evening, they were surprised to find the corpses - many of which were half-eaten by then as wild beasts and carrion birds were attracted by the scent of blood - and thanked the deities when they saw the blockade as they realized what could have been their fate otherwise. They silently removed the corpses and the fallen trees to the side and continued on their travels, only resting when it was late as night as they strived to make some distance from the place.

Meanwhile, in the wilderness, the scarred man navigated his way through beast trails and undergrowth, often relying on clearly man-made landmarks like notches cut into a pattern on the bark of trees to navigate through the woods.

The journey took them roughly a day and night before Aideen saw the small, pitiful excuse of a camp the bandits built in a clearing in the wilderness. The camp was merely a collection of lean-tos and tarps propped up on sticks rather than proper tents, with a crude fence built around it to give some semblance of security from wild animals.

When the scarred man pointed out the camp to Aideen, he looked at her pleadingly, but received a reply he had not expected as Aideen whipped out her weapon and sliced cleanly through his throat in one fluid movement. As he slumped down and died, his eyes looked questioningly at her, as if asking why he was killed as well.

“I never said I would let you off,” said Aideen during the scarred man’s last moments as he lay dying by her feet. “The only mercy I’d offer trash like you is a painless end and no more.”