[crow]

"Alright. If it gets too much, let me know. There's no shame in it, you know. Even the top command get a little ill here, after everything that's happened." Neo's tone was light as he said it, which only made it easier to disbelieve. Aram couldn't picture the likes of Lady Rici or General Erett feeling woozy in some ruin. Neo was probably saying it to offer comfort, for all the good it would do him.

Jackdaw continued onward, his pace quickening as if being drawn. Occasionally his direction altered slightly, but even then there was no hesitation. He was certainly on his way somewhere, though Aram couldn't yet tell what their destination was.

[crow]

Whatever it was, though, it wasn't close. When they'd been walking for a good twenty minutes at a brisk pace with no end in sight, Aram began to turn his attention to the scenery. He was still on guard for any disturbance, but there was no point in forever staring at the back of the demon.

The ruins offered their own points of interest, despite their demolished state. Not all the buildings were completely destroyed. Some still stood, barely, the way that their little storeroom entrance had done. Others had husks of half-erect walls marking out where their boundaries used to lie. Colorful glass and bits of mural tile littered the landscape.

[crow]

It was easy to see that it really had been grand once. In its glory days, it was supposed to have been a place of worship unrivaled by anywhere else in the realm. A pity that it had been reduced to this, but at least the distorted energies had kept it safe from looters. Even with the fear of the gods struck into them, some unscrupulous human thieves would doubtless have tried their luck anyway, otherwise.

But humans weren't the only things missing from the wreckage. Aram hadn't been able to put his finger on what felt so off about the place at first, but now he realized. Nothing grew here. Plants should have begun to overtake the ruins, but there were none to be found.

[crow]

Not even the enterprising weeds grew between the cracks where the ground was exposed. In turn, no insects or small scuttling rodents made their home here. The whole place was devoid of life, and the few pools of water they passed were stagnant where they stood. The effect was downright eerie. Aram had to repress the urge to shudder, for fear of drawing Neo's attention and concern.

As the walk dragged on, however, he found himself asking, "Do you really think it's here? Maybe it fled, or died somewhere." The little dud demons they kept for this kind of thing weren't strong enough to cause major damage anyway. Aram somehow doubted they'd survive long in a place like this.

[crow]

Aram thought Neo would merely brush off his concern like always. In fact, maybe he'd rather hoped for it, to know that his fears were unfounded. Unfortunately, Neo did nothing of the sort. He scratched at his face, seeming to consider the idea. "I'm not sure myself," he said at last. "Our boy's tracking something, but I couldn't really tell you what... They loosed it recently, so it ought to still be alive and kicking, but there's no telling for sure. We don't really canvas a place like the Grand Saints if we don't have to."

He was about to say something more, but they both realized abruptly that Jackdaw had stopped. The demon was kneeling, inspecting something with his hands.

[crow]

It took Aram a moment to register the smell. His senses were still dulled by the influence of the energies, despite Neo's assistance. He froze as the realization struck him: there was a faintly metallic scent in the air. In a few steps, he had closed the distance, standing at Jackdaw's side to look down at what had given the demon pause. His expression stiffened at the sight.

The ground was stained a dark color, more black than red. What was left of the body was barely recognizable. It was--- It had to be a demon. Human blood would have been brighter, more vivid. This was the dark ichor of a demon, something that Aram would recognize anywhere.

[crow]

There was an awful lot of it... But the more he looked, the more he thought there was less than there ought to be. The corpse, or what was left of it, seemed like it had burst open, somehow torn apart from inside. Splatters marked the walls as high as they could reach, and globs of flesh were scattered in a wide circumference from the meaty mess of the main corpse.

Neo, drawing close, was less reserved in his reaction. He looked aghast, his face going ashen. "Gods' names, what in the five realms is this?" he whispered.

Jackdaw was kneeling, his fingers traced through the blood. Had it been a fellow Sentinel, Aram might have said something, but this kind of disgusting gesture was befittng of demon filth.

[crow]

It merely confirmed what he had thought all along. Besides, it wasn't conducive to stop him. Maybe this was part of the... tracking. No. Aram's eyes widened in surprise as the thought hit him. "This... This is the dud, isn't it? It's what we loosed." It wasn't a question, but he looked to Neo for confirmation.

The tall Sentinel blinked. Slowly, he said, "Yes... It's a little more powerful than our usual, but this does look like the type we use. Or, well, feels like." There wasn't, admittedly, much of it left to look at anymore. Aram fought the urge to grimace again. Now wasn't the time to let his feelings get the better of him.

[crow]

There was something afoot here. Nothing grew, and nothing lived, in the wasteland of the Grand Saints. There shouldn't have been anything left to do this to the dud they'd set loose. That was chiefly why they'd chosen a place like this. The Sentinels wouldn't have wanted to endanger the lives of those they wanted to protect just to test a new weapon, after all. But something had gotten to it anyway, and savaged it like this, before they'd even arrived on the scene.

"What do you think could have done it?" Aram said. Much as he hated to do it, he knelt too, pressing his fingers to the ground. The blood wasn't even cold.

[crow]

Whatever it was, however, it had done the deed cleanly. There was nothing here that Aram could use to trace it. He had been a tracker once, in the woods where he grew up, before he became a sentinel, but there was no blood spoor, no tracks. He didn't have a hound to put on the scent. Well, he had Jackdaw, he supposed; a mongrel might have been an apt metaphor, all things considered. It wasn't scent that the demon tracked, but maybe it was something like.

Neo made a non-committal noise of thought. Aram waited a moment, thinking perhaps he would give an answer, but Neo remained silent. It seemed he was as stumped as Aram was.

[.:Random Event:.]

The cathedral was a spooky place, to be sure. Echoes of laughter could be heard in the distance, and there was just something about the air there that raised the hairs on the back of one's neck. Then again, maybe it was the bloodstains on the ground. They looked awfully fresh... Perhaps someone had tried an ill-fated sacrifice here? Nearby, a glint of metal offered another explanation for the stains. Some Metal Plates, speckled with red, gleamed from a shadowy corner.

[crow]

Fortunately for them, Jackdaw didn't seem bothered by the gore. No, indeed, with Jocasta's treatment there shouldn't have been much that would have bothered him at all anymore. Aram watched him, for a lack of anything better to do. Neo still wasn't speaking, and Aram found that he needed distraction, or else his mind would wander back to the sick sensation still hovering at the periphery of his senses.

He hadn't expected to see anything but the same blank look on the demon's face. As it was, he half thought he imagined it. But for a brief moment, he thought he could make out... something like astonishment, flitting across Jackdaw's features.

[crow]

It was dull, whatever it was, permeating through the layers of whatever Jocasta had laid up on him. Aram blinked in disbelief, and it was gone when his eyes were open again. He must have imagined it. He had to have imagined it. Whatever his qualms with her and her sentimental attachments, Jocasta was good at what she did. The only reason they kept her on was because those attachments never interfered with her work.

Nevertheless, Aram found himself beginning to doubt. He kept his eyes trained on the demon's face as it rose, and angled itself this way and that again.

"It's triangulating," said Neo, thoughtfully. The movement had caught his attention, and he turned to look upon Jackdaw too.

[crow]

Aram said nothing. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have brought up the matter to Neo immediately, but he was still convinced that he was merely imagining things. There was no need to bother Neo with something frivolous like that, only to have it come to naught. If he saw it again, perhaps...

The demon's face remained impassive, however, and after a time, Jackdaw moved off again. Neo and Aram exchanged a look, with the former giving a shrug and a smile. They followed as Jackdaw walked on.

It was more of the same, for a while. The wasteland was curiously uniform, without any sense of a true heart to the sick-making field, though clearly it had edges. Thank the gods and stars that it had edges.

[crow]

The only things of interest were the occasional murals and relatively intact art pieces he could see in the wreckage. Sometimes he caught a glimpse, here and there, of items that might have been of some value. He knew better than to try and take any for himself, however. Those items that had been magical before, of which there were a good number in the region, would have been corrupted beyond use by the field. Those with no magical properties may yet have been imbued with new ones, all of them undesirable, from their time here.

It was a lesson the Sentinels were taught early on, when they first learned about the nature of the Grand Saints. There were accounts enough of the people who had disregarded the warning to drive the point sickeningly home.