cold metal on his skin.
“Are you feeding the beast regularly?” asked the tulvar.
“Of course…” Pugh answered, trembling as he opened his eyes.
“Good.” The tulvar sat on the Lord’s throne. “That good-for-nothing Alston is later than usual. You had better make sure he’s coming,” he concluded with contempt.
“At once, General!” exclaimed Pugh, flustered and shaken.
In the meantime, Alston of the Low Liegedom had entered the city, and was preparing to appear at the palace. Pugh came out, and soon they were standing in each other’s company. Short in stature, and dressed in his usual blue velvet clothes, Alston wore a ring-shaped hat, from which a flap of blue cloth descended down one side. Over his chest, he wore a large brooch with his family emblem. His curly, blonde hair covered his ears, framing his long, gaunt face. His hook nose and small mouth did nothing for his looks. The inhabitants of the Low Liegedom often joked that his mother must have laid with a goblin.
“Well you took your sweet time!” snapped Pugh.
The nobleman looked at him, and with his usual monotone he said: “So where’s General Zund?”
Pugh started pushing his peer along. “You’d best present yourself to him immediately!”
Bored and listless, Alston entered the palace. “Grand General Zund! I can assure you that we didn’t expect you here in the Twin Liegedoms…” he said, inspiring terror in all the humans present.
Zund walked up to Alston. “Your idiocy is unmatched!” he shouted angrily. He took the aristocrat by the clothes and forced him to the ground, pressing his face with his foot against the muddy boot tracks mixed with dung and piss. “You shall pay for your insolence by crawling to my throne.”
Alston crawled across the room, coming to Zund’s feet with his clothes soiled. Terrified and trembling, he was sweating profusely, and as soon as the General leaned over him, he burst into tears like a child, his stammering, incomprehensible gibberish punctuated by moans.
“Now beg!” shouted the tulvar.
“Mercy! Have mercy!” whined Alston. “I’ll do anything, Supreme General… for you, and for our only King!”
“Get up, scum!” Zund nodded to one of his soldiers, who recalled about twenty tulvars into the palace, and they settled along the walls of the hall; at that point it was clear that they would not leave soon. The door opened, and in stepped Auril, Zund’s younger sister. On the orders of the General, Alston was chained and gagged by the soldiers while Pugh took the brunt of Auril’s magic. The priestess, with a quick swish of her hand, raised the man from the ground as he moaned fearfully. Auril’s invisible power wrapped around Pugh’s throat, and his feeble flesh was devoid of the strength with which to resist.
Zund approached the man, and motioned for his sister to ease her grip; Pugh’s toes barely touched the floor. “Tell me where the crypt is located,” ordered the tulvar.
“What crypt!?” choked Pugh. He yelped when he felt a sharp pain in the abdomen, as if a dagger had pierced him. Auril clenched her other hand into a fist, and he felt his guts squeeze.
“That’s enough,” Zund told his sister. “The ancient crypt, you useless chowhound! Tell me where it is!”
The man did not reply. The torture continued and Zund asked him the same question over and over.
At her brother’s behest, the Priestess threw him against a wall, prompting the man to shriek anew. She crept into Pugh’s head in search of his deepest fears, and when she found what she was looking for, she smirked. The man saw the being he feared appear before his eyes. He began scampering every which way across the hall, gripped by a profound terror. He wanted to escape, but Auril’s grip forced him to the wall, and when the being approached him, he screeched.
“Leave him,” Zund ordered his sister.
She obeyed, and Pugh started running with the animal chasing him, eventually curling up in a corner and covering his eyes, waiting for the horrid beast to disappear.
“That’s enough! Make that hen disappear!” cried the man, worn out and whimpering. “I don’t know of any accursed crypt! There have never been crypts here!”
Auril dispelled the hen, and the man remained curled up in the corner.
Zund came up to him and whispered, “I’m choosing to believe you for now…”
Alston began fidgeting, making it clear that he wanted to speak; the tulvars took his gag off. “There are no crypts here, only orchards and poor peasant villages!” stressed the nobleman, trying to convince him as best he could.
“How can we be so sure?” asked Auril.
“They’ll talk,” said her brother.
Zund ordered his soldiers to retrieve two cages in town, to be hung from the ceiling with the two men locked inside. Having seized the palace, he deployed troops in the two cities of the Twin Liegedoms. Finding traces of the ancient artifact would take longer than expected.
The dungeons of the Palace of the High Liegedom were dead silent. Auril had made her way down into these dark corridors. She brandished no torch or brazier; only the virk crystal at her neck illuminated her path. The beast being kept in one of those rooms was a jorfang—a woman who lived in the woods, and who transformed into a wolf, appearing during times of hardship. Legends painted the she-beasts as protectors, defending any children, injured people, and the otherwise troubled who had found themselves in the woods by taking them to safe havens, pouncing on any who would do them harm. Being the personifications of the wolf of the goddess Sesta, jorfangs were considered a boon, but whenever they were torn from their mission, they became unable to turn back into women, and the beasts were beset by an uncontrollable bloodlust. With her magic, the priestess was one of the few able to control a jorfang. Having reached the beginning of the corridor that housed its prison at the other end, she could already hear its heavy breathing. She heard it groan when, now at the heavy wood-and-iron door, the light emanating from the crystal aroused the beast from its torpor. A swift lunge, and the creature was at the door; Auril felt its warm and smelly breath through the small grate. The priestess opened the door without hesitation and entered. Auril’s red eyes shining, the beast sensed her power, and stepped back, quietening down and growling lightly.
“I see it hasn’t been long since you’ve fed,” said Auril, satisfied. She knew that the more prey the jorfang received, the more ferocious and voracious it became. The stench of what remained of its meal was unbearable, the dried blood staining the beast’s fangs and mouth as well as its claws. The Priestess heard the door to the dungeons open, and saw the jorfang was getting worked up at the sight of the approaching torches and the odor of the guards. Auril left the cell and closed the heavy door behind her. The two men, terrified, hid a little girl. The priestess approached her, studying her. The little human, about seven years old, was undernourished, with blonde shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, and a pale pink complexion. She wore peasant clothes and hailed from a family of drifters.
“There’s nothing fearsome about you,” she said in disgust.
The girl did not answer, instead going toward the cell. She opened the door, and the jorfang remained crouched in a corner, its yellow eyes observing the little girl without ever losing sight of the slightest move on the part of the guards, who dragged the remains of its meal out. The little girl’s eyes wandered aimlessly in the dark in which
