“This is where you… arrived?” Aila quietly asked, her voice only audible to the few standing near her. “Back in the spring?”
“This is it,” Jay replied, her own voice somewhat muted. “Well, technically I arrived somewhere up there, along that ridgeline to the northeast. But yeah, this is the place.”
“I can’t imagine spending so long in such a lonely place,” Eir murmured as her eyes traveled over the frozen scene. “Even more so when demons prowl the land.”
“I had ways of keeping myself entertained,” Syd assured the priestess dryly as she thought of her time spent in the temple under the watchful gaze of D’s smirking statue.
The day after Sabina had gifted Jadis with her cursed bracelet, the expedition had finally made it to the Sweet Pine Valley where Jadis had spent her first month on Oros. The first split-peaked mountain that Fortune’s Favored had come north to investigate lay to the east of the abandoned village. It wasn’t one of the mountains that made up the Sweet Pine Valley, but it was adjacent to them so it was relatively close by. Originally, Jadis hadn’t planned on stopping at the old mining village, but after the events of the fort ambush, she decided it was worth a visit.
From her view standing at the edge of the forest clearing, the village didn’t look much different from how Jadis remembered it. Certainly, the roofs were all covered in snow now, but otherwise the place was the same. Small stone buildings, abandoned to the elements. Several with caved-in roofs and at least one building had a whole wall missing on one side due to a suspicious tumble of logs that was piled up next to it. A temple with a tall tower stood at the far end of the village, practically abutting the cliff face that hemmed in the valley to the north. On the northwest side of the village rose a hill, at the top of which was an artificially created pond with a few buildings next to it, along with the wide entrance to a natural cave. While she couldn’t see them, Jadis also knew there were more buildings hiding in the woods surrounding the main village clearing.
The question was, what else was hiding in those woods?
“Lots of tracks,” Otto reported as he and Gerd came back from doing a quick scout around the village perimeter. “They look to be a day old, nothing as recent as this morning. No sign of movement, but the tracks go all throughout the buildings, including the hill.”
“Didn’t go close,” Gerd added in his hoarse voice. “But we could see tracks going into that cave.”
“Not much reason to go into a cave like that unless you’re mining ore,” Captain Willa muttered as she stared intently up at the hill.
“Or you’re running from something,” Dys commented. At Willa’s raised eyebrow, she shrugged. “We have some experience with the latter.”
Jadis and her team stood slightly off from the soldiers, but all had gathered at the south side of the village to observe and wait for word from the scouts. Otto and Gerd had been sent to scout the closer perimeter, but Ada and Friedkin had been sent to scout the larger area surrounding the village. Kerr had also stalked off into the woods to investigate, her direction fueled by Jadis’ description of a few buildings that she knew had cellars where people might choose to hide.
As they waited for the return of the other scouts, Willa stepped closer to the gathered Fortune’s Favored to review their plan of attack.
“Are you sure you three want to take the lead?” Willa asked as she eyed the three Nephilim. “Trap spotting isn’t in your skill sets.”
A statement of fact, not a question. Jadis couldn’t argue.
“No, it’s not,” Jay said as she took a step closer to speak with Willa directly. “But surviving huge amounts of damage is. We can take the hit if another ambush is sprung on us. Plus we’re faster than any of you, too. We can get out of the way if they try to drop that temple tower down on us.”
“I would hope they wouldn’t perform such a sacrilegious act,” Eir said with fervor. “A holy place dedicated to the worship of the gods should never be defiled in such a manner.”
Jadis would have to discuss temple defilement with Eir later. Or maybe never. Any embarrassing evidence Jadis might have left behind would surely be gone by that point.
“I doubt they would,” Willa said with a nod to the priestess. “Nevertheless, I would consider all possibilities. And in any case, it would be best if no traps are triggered at all.”
“We can agree with that,” Jay said easily. “Just remember what I told you about the buildings. If there are any surprises waiting in hiding, we’ll find them.”
Jadis had, of course, told Willa and everyone else everything she knew about the village. She’d spent a month in the desolate place exploring every nook and cranny. Unless the bandits had made modifications to the existing structures, there was no room in the village she hadn’t been inside at least twice. Forearming the soldiers with her knowledge of the buildings would hopefully give them an edge against any traps or enemy combatants that they might encounter.
They only had to wait a few more minutes before Kerr and the remaining two scouts returned. All three reported no sign of activity in the surrounding forest, bandit or otherwise. Everything the assailants had been doing had been restricted to the village proper, or so it seemed.
“No sense wasting the light,” Willa said after hearing the report. “Time to move in.”
“Ready or not, here we come,” Jay said darkly as she hefted her massive war hammer.
Splitting their forces into two groups, Fortune’s Favored moved to the west side of the main village road with the intent of searching and clearing all the buildings on that side. Captain Willa and her soldiers took the east side to do the same. Two of her men, Ada and Lutz, were left behind to guard the wagons from any surprises that might come from the south.
Taking the lead, Jay marched forward with Dys on her left and Syd on her right. Kerr walked directly behind Jay; a spot chosen so that she could more easily spot any traps that the Nephilim might not notice. Behind her, Aila, Eir, and Sabina followed, the vulnerable mages protected by Jadis and her flanking bodies. Thea and Bridget brought up the rear, serving as a rear guard against the possibility of an ambush from behind.
“This is the tannery,” Syd said as the group approached the first building on their side of the road. “No cellar. But there’s a shed.”
“Is this where you got the material for that, uh, armor you were wearing when we first met?” Sabina asked while trying not to sound rude and failing miserably.
“Yup,” Jay said before kicking the door of the building hard enough to send it flying off its hinges. “Better than going around naked.”
“Barely,” Aila teased in a whisper. “Now keep focused. No distractions.”
Searching the decrepit tannery resulted in nothing. No traps, no hiding bandits. Once they’d cleared the structure, they moved on to the next, keeping up a pace so that they stayed about even with Willa’s force. Neither wanted to get too far ahead nor behind the other, in the case that there was an ambush.
Building after building was carefully searched. All were devoid of life. Strangely, they were devoid of traps as well. Considering the encounter at the fort as well as all the traps they’d discovered along the road, they’d all expected there to be traps in the village. But as they continued to clear the village, they found a complete absence of any traps.
“The bones are gone,” Syd said as she poked her lance into the pile of logs and stones that had been the final rest place of the bone thief matriarch. “Do you think they were reused by more bone thieves or were they destroyed by the men Renz sent?”
“A bit of both, probably,” Aila said as she pointed to a wide pit that Jadis didn’t remember a little further west. “Something was burned, though.”
The pit was covered in snow, but the remains of charred wood stuck up in a few spots, the black soot evident. It was likely that Bernd’s Blades had at least burned the huge body of the matriarch after taking one of its eyes for proof that it was dead. Any bones would have been burnt as well to prevent them from falling into the clutches of more demons, something that in hindsight Jadis wished she’d done rather than foolishly tossing them into the pond.
“Should we check up there?” Bridget asked as she pointed her flail towards the hill.
“Not until the rest of the village is cleared,” Jay answered.
It took some time, but eventually they managed to check all of the buildings on the west side of the road, leaving just the temple to the north untouched. Willa and her troops finished their own search a minute or two later, reporting that they too had found no traps and no hidden enemies.
“What are the chances we won’t find anything in there?” Jay asked the captain as she motioned to the closed temple doors with her hammer.
“I don’t make bets,” Willa replied as she motioned for her men to take up positions along the side of the temple.
Jadis wasted no time and did the same. One thing she immediately noticed was that the large windows running along the sides of the temple had all been boarded up. When Jadis had left, they’d stood open, their glass shattered and presenting no barrier at all. One of the temple doors had been off a hinge, too, though that was no longer the case. Clearly someone had taken the time to secure the building.
Motioning for the others to stand back, Jadis’ three selves moved to the temple doors. Cautiously testing them, she found that they were barred from the inside. Readying herself for a trap, Jay took a step back before slamming her metal mallet into the doors, breaking them open in one powerful blow.
Nothing happened. No irritating powder. No spears or spikes. No giant boulder. Just the echo of a dark and empty ruin.
Taking careful steps inside, Jadis let her eyes adjust to the dim light, taking in what she could see. The interior of the temple was certainly different from how she’d left it. The old wooden pews had been removed, leaving the stone hall almost completely barren. One of the windows in the back of the temple had been fitted with stacks of stones, turning it into a makeshift fireplace. There were a few bits of trash and refuse left in the corners, things that Jadis knew she hadn’t tossed in those spots and looked like the remains of old meals or unwanted bits of cloth. There was one change in particular that took Jadis a moment to place. She almost didn’t realize, though once she did, she couldn’t help but let out a cry of confusion.
“What the fuck?” Jay cursed, taking a few more steps into the temple.
“What is it?” Willa called after her. “Any sign of the bandits?”
“No,” Jay shook her head. “Well, I guess, looks like they might have been living in here. But that’s not what I mean.”
The others cautiously made their way inside as Jay spoke, taking in what little there was to see. As Kerr peered around the dim hall, she shook her head.
“What’s the problem? Looks all clear to me.”
Barely after the archer had finished speaking her words, Eir let out a gasp of surprise.
“Where’s the statue?”
“What statue?” Willa asked as she drew up next to Jay.
“Exactly,” Jay said, pointing at the dais at the end of the hall where an empty pedestal stood. “Where the fuck is D’s statue?”
359