The bleeding, one armed scout lay unconscious on the floor, and Belladonna knelt beside him.

Lord Aris remained perfectly still, his mind already planning to send a letter to the capital, asking for reinforcements.

High Priest Remus, on the other hand, was hyperventilating, muttering prayers to the Goddess of Light, his fat fingers fumbling with his rosary beads.

Leo meanwhile did not pray, did not care about reinforcements, or the supply lines.

He simply felt the Draconic Bloodline within his veins flare up. His territory had been trespassed upon, and his men were being slaughtered.

"Aris," Leo said, his voice dropping to a low, "You stay here. Lock down the city. Raise the magical barriers if you can. No one gets in or out without your will."

"And you, my Lord?" Aris asked, though the slight, grim smile playing on the Royal Inspector’s lips suggested he already knew the answer.

"Looks like they are testing the fences," Leo said, his glowing eyes turning towards the open balcony, looking east towards the Endless Forest, "Bella! Make the preparations. We are going hunting."

Belladonna’s smile was a terrifying crescent of white teeth. The Bandit Queen didn’t bother with a salute. She simply turned on her heel, her heavy boots stomping out of the room, "I was waiting for you to say it, Master."

And within twenty minutes, the courtyard of the Lord’s mansion was a hive of buzzing chatter.

Leo emerged from the armoury, having swapped his fine noble’s coat for reinforced dark leather and steel plating.

His broadsword was freshly oiled, sharpened, and rested heavily at his hip. As he walked towards the stables, he felt a presence materialize at his side.

It was Shadow.

She made absolutely no sound as she fell into step beside him. She was clad in her pitch-black leather armour, her face obscured by her dark veil.

But her demeanour had fundamentally shifted. Before, she had been a professional bodyguard, a tool wielded by Ryana. Now, after the sacrilegious subjugation in the Temple of Light, she moved like an extension of Leo’s own body.

Her eyes, visible just above the veil, never left him. They were wide, dark, and filled with a fanatic, broken devotion. She practically vibrated with the need to serve, to protect, to kill for the man who had completely shattered her mind and rebuilt it in his image.

Leo reached out, his hand wrapping around the back of her neck. He squeezed the tense muscles there roughly, his thumb brushing against her skin.

Shadow let out a soft, muffled whimper, leaning heavily into his grip, her knees weakening for a fraction of a second.

"Stay close today," Leo murmured, leaning down so his breath washed over her veiled ear, "I want to see what my new hound can do when she’s off the leash."

"Yes, Master," Shadow breathed, her voice thick with adoration, "I will tear their throats out for you."

"Aww, look at the happy couple," a mocking voice called out.

Leo turned. Belladonna sat atop a massive, coal-black warhorse, her Greatsword strapped to her back.

She held the reins of Leo’s own steed, and behind her, twenty of the most elite, battle-hardened Blackfang riders sat in absolute silence, their faces painted with dark ash, their weapons drawn.

Belladonna looked down at Shadow, who was still leaning into Leo’s hand. The Bandit Queen offered a knowing, dirty smirk.

"Broke her in good, didn’t you, Master?" Belladonna teased, her eyes raking over the assassin’s submissive posture.

Shadow tensed, her hand dropping to the hilt of her dagger, but Leo tightened his grip on her neck, keeping her in place.

"She prayed very loudly," Leo said with a wicked grin, vaulting up onto his horse, "But today isn’t about this, Bella."

"Ride out!"

The heavy portcullis of Auravale’s eastern gate groaned upward, and the vanguard surged out into the wild.

They did not wait for a lumbering army. They rode hard and fast, a blackened spearhead cutting through the dense, towering pines of the Endless Forest.

Shadow rode a sleek, grey mare, positioning herself recklessly close to Leo.

She completely ignored her own flanks, her eyes constantly scanning the trees ahead of him, entirely willing to throw her body in the path of a stray arrow to act as his physical shield.

It took them an hour of hard riding to reach Outer Camp Four.

Long before they saw the clearing, they smelled it.

It was a thick, metallic stench that coated the back of the throat. The smell of copper, voided bowels, and freshly spilled meat. Leo pulled his horse to a halt, raising a fist. The twenty or so Blackfang riders stopped instantly.

They dismounted and moved forward on foot, creeping through the dense underbrush.

When Leo pushed aside the final fern and looked into the logging camp, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.

The scout had not exaggerated. If anything, he had undersold the horror.

The camp was a slaughterhouse. The sturdy wooden cabins had been smashed to splinters.

Blood painted the forest floor as fifty or so men lay dead, but they had not died quickly in combat. They had been butchered like livestock.

Their heads, had been severed and jammed onto the sharpened wooden spikes of the camp’s palisade. Torsos had been ripped open, the ribcages cracked apart to expose the empty cavities within.

And hanging from the thick, ancient branches of the surrounding oak trees were the bodies. The Zarthians had indeed used their own intestines, stretching the wet, grey-pink ropes to hoist the mutilated corpses into the air, leaving them to drip slowly onto the dirt below.

Behind Leo, a few of the hardened Blackfang bandits gagged, turning away to vomit into the bushes. These were men who killed for a living, but the sheer, primitive savagery of the scene was nauseating.

Belladonna stepped up beside Leo, her dark eyes simply went flat, dead, completely devoid of warmth.

"They played with them. They enjoyed it," She whispered, not turning her gaze away from the scene in front of her.

Leo crouched down, examining the mud. The tracks were massive. They weren’t just horses. He saw the distinct, oversized paw prints of Dire-wolves, the deep, cloven hooves of Razor-backed Boars, and the heavy, three-toed impressions of scaled beasts he couldn’t even name.

"Shadow," Leo commanded softly.

The veiled assassin was beside him in a heartbeat. She knelt, her gloved fingers tracing the edge of a massive, bloody paw print.

"They are heavy, Master," Shadow reported, her professional training overtaking her infatuation. "A large party. Over a hundred, easily. The beasts are weighed down with loot and meat. They are not moving fast. They went northeast, deeper into the thicket."

"Lead," Leo said.

They left the horror of the camp behind, moving with lethal silence through the forest. Shadow tracked the massive raiding party with terrifying efficiency.

The Zarthians were arrogant; they hadn’t bothered to cover their tracks. They had blazed a trail of broken branches, trampled bushes, and discarded, blood-stained tools.

Less than three miles later, the smell of roasting meat wafted through the trees. It was the sickeningly sweet scent of burning human flesh mixed with the woodsmoke.

Leo halted the vanguard at the top of a steep ridge, looking down into a massive, natural clearing.

The Zarthians.

Leo felt a cold chill of genuine awe. They were giants. Over a hundred men, none of them shorter than eight feet tall, lounging around massive bonfires.

They were bare chested, the thick skin covered head-to-toe in swirling, jagged blue tribal tattoos. They wore crude armour fashioned from the bones of massive beasts ribcages for breastplates, hollowed skulls for shoulder pauldrons.

And their mounts were nightmares. Some had massive Dire-wolves, the size of small draft horses, and some had huge Razor-backed Boars with tusks like scimitars rooted in the mud.

A few of the men were leaning against reptilian, scaled beasts that looked like wingless drakes.

In the centre of the camp, sitting on a throne made from the stacked corpses of the loggers, was their leader.

He was a mountain of a man, even among giants. His head was completely shaved, and his jaw was disproportionately massive, jutting out like an anvil.

Resting casually against his shoulder was what seemed like a rusted iron ship’s anchor attached to a thick length of blackened chain.

"Look at his chest," Belladonna pointed it out, her eyes narrowed.

On the giant’s left pectoral muscle was a deep, burned scar. A brand in the shape of a shattered skull.

"An exile brand," Belladonna whispered to Leo, "I have seen it on Zarthian mercenaries before. It means he was cast out of his tribe. Stripped of his honour."

"But is he truly exiled?" Leo muttered to himself.

"It’s a loophole," Leo continued, "Aris said Vorath was unifying the tribes. Vorath wants Auravale’s gold, but he doesn’t want to trigger a full-scale war with the Royal Legion while his own house is in disorder. So, he uses this brute."

"A proxy," Belladonna caught on.

"Feels so," Leo said, "If this giant... The Exiled Chieftain succeeds in sacking the region, Vorath sweeps in, claims the territory, and takes the gold. If the giant fails and is slaughtered by us... Vorath throws his hands up and says, ’He was a banished rogue. He acted alone. Not my problem.’"

It was a brilliant, cowardly political manoeuvre. It meant Vorath was testing the waters without risking his own neck. It was an assumption, but in Leo’s mind, it was a certified fact.

Leo drew his broadsword. The steel hissed softly in the crisp air.

"Too bad for him," Leo said, his lips pulling back into a predatory snarl, "I don’t play politics with animals."

** ** ** ** **