They tied the horses to a ruined fence and trudged into the blackened hamlet. It certainly looked like a dragon had hit it; few forces on Arth had the firepower to reduce buildings and bodies to soot with such efficiency. Half of a former building was a copse of charred timbers, the other was dunes of gray ash. Bits of misshapen metal were strewn throughout the debris; a half-molten stove with a flaccid pipe, a sword blade that had warped under the heat that burned away its grip, a silver puddle that may once have been some cheap cutlery.
Yet Gorm found that if he looked at the destruction a certain way, he could see a clear pattern in the ash and soot. The scorch marks and far-flung debris all radiated away from a blackened center next to the lake, like the iris of a dead titan’s eye staring into the sky. Nothing recognizable was left anywhere near the center of the blast, but near its northern edge Gorm made an interesting discovery.
Laruna looked down at the twisted shape. “It’s a piece of metal. We’ve found several like it.”
It looked like a breaking wave sculpted from steel and soot. Its long, irregular curve was marked by undulating shapes and jagged edges where a great force had ripped it apart. Down the center of the wave, Gorm could see that something had been imprinted on the metal.
“This one’s different,” Gorm said. “More ripped up. Somebody fetch a sheet of parchment. And charcoal.”
The paper took a while to find. Charcoal was close at hand. Within a few minutes, Gorm was pressing the page against the warped metal and scrubbing it with a hunk of charred tavern. As the paper blackened, a portion of a warped, skeletal face came into relief. A thin, wobbly diagram of a flame surrounded the distorted skull.
“What do ye suppose this means?” Gorm asked. “A secret gatherin’ like the Leviathan Project? Or maybe the sigil of some dark cult? Or even a portrait of another liche?”
Laruna glanced over his shoulder. “It’s the symbol for ‘flammable contents.’ You see it in alchemy labs all the time.”
Gorm scratched his beard and surveyed the blackened town. “But what does it mean?”
“It means you can’t cast pyromancy or deal with lit flames around—”
“Specifically,” the Dwarf said loudly, “what’s a steel barrel of flammable liquid doin’ in the middle of nowhere? And could it have done all this damage?”
The heroes’ collective gaze drifted over the shallow crater and the ruined remnants of the town beyond it. Gaist shook his head.
“I don’t know.” Kaitha sucked a fast breath in between clenched teeth. “We’d smell alchemist’s fire or bane oil if they were in the barrels. And even then, this blast is far too big…”
“Faeflame?” suggested Gorm.
Kaitha dismissed the idea with a wave. “Leaves green soot.”
The Dwarf’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Arson’s Friend?”
“Only comes by the vial, and that’s if you can find it. I haven’t seen it in the market for years.” Kaitha shook her head. “Seems unlikely.”
“Aye.” Gorm scowled and tried to think. He looked to the mage. “Any ideas?”
“Don’t look at me.” Laruna shrugged. “I’ve never needed another way to light enemies on fire.”
“Looks like another matter for a foreign sorcerer,” said Gorm.
The solamancer opened her mouth as if to say something, then shrugged and walked away.
Gorm heaved a sigh and looked out over the ash. There wasn’t much left of Sowdock to search; there hadn’t been much of it before the fire either. “I suppose we’re done here.”
“Not quite!” Burt’s head popped up from a knot of charred bushes, wearing a rare grin. “I sniffed out something you’re going to want to see.”
The nose of any breed of Gnoll, from Bugbears to Kobolds, was as keen as a bloodhound’s. Knowing someone’s diet from a waft of their breath or sorting through the textured scents of a hallway to deduce who had passed through it were nothing to a Gnoll. They could smell fear, and guilt, and a hope that nobody would look in the cupboard anytime soon.
Other children wondered how mothers always knew; Gnoll pups held no such uncertainty.
Feista Hrurk glowered down at her three paint-spattered progeny as they stood in the center of the kitchen of Mrs. Hrurk’s Home for the Underprivileged. Dogo whimpered as thick tears rolled down his face. Little Terrie was staring back with a defiance that was both enraging and familiar to Feista. Rex leaned indifferently on his crutch, waiting for the consequences to fall so he could get back to ignoring them in favor of his adventure novels. It was enough to make Mrs. Hrurk wonder why she had been so excited for him to learn to read.
“Do you know what I need to do today?” she growled, eyeing each of the pups in turn.
If shrugs made a sound, the response would have been deafening.
She counted off tasks on her paw. “I have to negotiate a contract with the carpenter for the new apartments. I have to go to the fishmonger to make him actually deliver the salted fish we bought for the winter. I have a new family of Goblins arriving this weekend to prepare for. I do not have time to repaint Mr. Zug’Gath’s apartment.”
More shrugs. Feista recalled vaguely that she had once been similarly indifferent to the toils of her parents, though she was certain she hadn’t been this bad. Her father would have ripped her throat out. She might have done the same to her ungrateful brood, had Aubren not burst into the kitchen.
“Carpenter’s here, ma’am!” said the young Human. “And the postal courier has been by as well. Just bills—your letter didn’t come,” she added, answering Feista’s unspoken question.
Mrs. Hrurk’s shoulders fell at the news despite her best effort not to get her hopes up.
“But the Wood Gnomes did hand off a note from Mr. Poldo.” Aubren handed over a slip of paper covered in tiny stamped letters with a conciliatory smile. “That’s something, right?”
“Oh, it’s always something with him,” said Feista, but her treacherous tail wagged vigorously and undermined her feigned annoyance. She read the note eagerly. When she noticed the pups grinning, she suppressed her smile and leaned against the counter to keep her tail still. “Now Mr. Poldo has asked me to go to the Wall to make a trade. There’s no time for your mischief today.”
“But apparently there’s time to lecture us,” grumbled Terrie.
Mrs. Hrurk stared daggers at her daughter. Had Feista ever spoken to her own mother with such insolence? Yet the girl had a point. There wasn’t time to teach them a lesson. “Since you are so interested in painting, you will repaint the hallways outside Mr. Zug’Gath’s apartment yourselves. Flat gray, as it was before!” she added quickly.
The boys groaned. Terrie bristled. “That’s not the sort of painting we—”
“Oh, I know what you like to do,” Feista snarled. “But you’ll never make a real mark on the world if the bannermen haul you off for painting silly symbols on the neighbors’ walls. So you’ll fix your mistake, and apologize to Mr. Zug’Gath!”
“And if we don’t?” Rex asked, doubtlessly emboldened by his sister.
