A Lost Flame
The Stalker knew something was not right, and drove his horse forward. The scene that he found was a one too familiar. Recently repaired doors busted through. Blood stains on the streets, walls. Wet things he did his best not to identify.
His quick mind noticed that not all the houses were hit. Several on the periphery of town, but then the battered houses become fewer. The blood is no less, however. He suspects that a fight was put up. The caravaners? The townfolk would not have done this, surely. He pressed on, needing answers.
In the town square, he found the bodies. Gathered together, stacked, the collateral of death. Unlike the death from the plague, the quiet corpses screamed their violent ends. Barovian womenfolk and the Jorasco halflings went about their needed work, preparing for another day of burials. The Barovians looked numb; even the halflings has a distant look to them.
Jarrith almost pressed on, his questions answered without raising his voice when thought he saw it. A silvery warhorse, now caked it blood, but surely the same horse. Luminous! But another glance and the apparition was gone. But the sign was clear. Khensu was here.
A man driven, Jarrith threw himself off Selase's old mount, and flung open the door. Expecting the worse, what he found was little better.
A litter. And tending it, two forms. One smaller, blood, dirt and gore hiding its figure. The other, larger but just as haggard. The latter turned, and with a horror in his eyes as deep as the chasm in Jarrith's soul, Khensu met Jarrith's gaze.
"I have failed him, Brother."