The silence that fell after the Ravagers' broken retreat was a fragile, wounded thing. It was punctuated not by cheers, but by the low moans of the wounded below and the grim, necessary work of securing the gate and tending to their own few casualties. The victory felt hollow, a chilling demonstration that left a cold knot in the stomach of every defender. They had seen men turned into puppets, and then watched as those same puppets had their strings tangled until they tore themselves apart. It was a defense that felt more like a damnation.
Retour found the twins later in a quiet alcove off the main cavern, where a natural spring pooled before disappearing into the mountain's depths. Ila was crushing a mix of pungent herbs in a stone mortar, the sharp scent of valerian root and something darker, like burnt ozone, cutting through the damp air. Ilie sat with her spindle, but the silver thread quivered, its light flickering like a guttering candle.
"What you did..." Retour began, leaning against the cool, damp stone. "It was more than just stopping them."
Ila didn't look up from her work. "Stopping a man is simple. A wall, a blade, your mist. Stopping the will that drives him requires a finer touch. We did not fight soldiers. We fought a poison that had been poured into their minds."
"The deepest part you touched," Retour pressed, remembering the shift in the air, the moment the assault had turned to self-annihilating terror. "The core of them. What was it?"
Ilie's spindle stilled. "The silent self. The 'I' that watches from behind the eyes, separate from the noise of emotion and command. In those men, it had been walled away, made a prisoner in a cell of fear and false courage, forced to watch the body it inhabited commit atrocities." Her amethyst eyes were deep with a sorrow that seemed to predate the kingdom itself. "We did not create the horror they felt. We simply dissolved the walls of the cell and held up a mirror, showing the prisoner the true face of his jailer. What he did with that freedom was his own choice, however terrible the result."
The explanation was more frightening than any tale of simple mind control. This was a violation of the soul's very architecture. "Could Rotard do this?"
"Not with this... artistry," Ila stated, crushing the herbs with finality. "His is a brutish will. He breaks minds with a hammer, leaving rubble and splinters. What we faced was the work of a different kind of craftsman. One who uses a scalpel and takes pride in their work." She looked up, her gaze sharp enough to cut. "He has a new tool. Someone with a delicate touch and a soul of venom."
The implication settled like a shard of ice in Retour's gut. The war had just expanded into a realm he could barely comprehend.
Two days later, the consequences of those fractured wills arrived. Ciski's scouts returned from a perimeter sweep, half-carrying a stumbling, disoriented figure between them. It was one of the Ravagers, a young man with a face that should have been too young for such emptiness. His eyes were wide, unseeing windows into a ransacked house of a mind. He trembled uncontrollably, his fingers locked around a shard of polished obsidian that seemed to drink the light from the cavern.
"He was just... there," one scout reported, his own face pale. "Stumbling in circles. Doesn't speak. Doesn't seem to hear us. Just... makes these sounds."
Oleik observed from a distance, his masked head tilting in assessment. "The connection was severed, but the vessel could not hold the void left behind. A mind, once its foundations are shattered, does not rebuild itself."
Ilie approached slowly, her movements fluid and non-threatening. She knelt before the catatonic young man, not touching him, her gaze soft but penetrating. Ila stood a pace behind, a vigilant guardian.
"The echoes here are loud," Ilie murmured, more to herself than to them. "The poison is gone, but the damage it wrought remains. The walls are down, but the prisoner is still trapped in the ruins, screaming." She reached out, not towards the man, but towards the obsidian shard in his white-knuckled grip. As her fingers neared it, the air in the alcove grew abruptly, unnaturally cold.
Suddenly, the Ravager's head snapped up. His mouth unhinged, but the voice that crawled out was not his. It was a dry, sibilant whisper, layered and distorted, as if multiple voices were speaking through a single, torn throat, laced with a cold, intellectual curiosity.
"We see you, little weavers. You who play with the loom of thought. You cleaned our canvas, but the paint has stained the grain. A fascinating result."
Ila's hand shot out, gripping her sister's shoulder. "A sending. A psychic echo, a trap left in the wreckage."
The whispering voice continued, devoid of emotion yet brimming with malicious interest. "The heir is a specimen of singular interest. A flawed, cracking vessel for such a magnificent, tempestuous power. We look forward to opening him. To studying the fault lines. We will learn what frequency makes him resonate with fear. What pressure makes his will snap. The sounds he will make will be a symphony."
Retour felt a chill that had nothing to do with the mist. This was the "artisan" Ila had spoken of. This was the mind behind the scalpel.
Ilie's face remained a placid mask, but her voice was forged iron. "You hide behind broken toys and cast your voice on the wind. Show yourself."
A dry, rasping chuckle, the sound of dust shifting on a tomb floor, echoed from the Ravager's throat. "All in the fullness of time. The final design is nearly complete. The Black Keep awaits its new, beating heart. We shall peel back the layers of his consciousness, one by one, until we find the one that unravels him completely."
The Ravager's body then convulsed violently, a marionette with its strings slashed. His eyes rolled back, showing the whites, and he collapsed into a heap, the obsidian shard clattering to the stone floor, now inert and dull. The connection vanished.
The alcove was left in a silence more profound than before, the threat now a tangible presence among them.
"He is not merely harvesting the mist," Oleik stated, his filtered voice grim. "He is conducting an experiment. This... 'artisan' is his psychopomp, his guide to the architecture of your soul."
Ila picked up the obsidian shard, her expression granite. "He is learning. Testing the resilience of our will, and the structural integrity of his." She looked at Retour, and in her sharp eyes, he saw a flicker of something that might have been concern. "The next assault will not be against our walls. It will be against the fortress of your mind. He will not send soldiers. He will send whispers. And he will try to make you open your own gates from the inside."
The siege of stone and steel was over. A new, more intimate and terrifying war had been declared. The Ravencleft was secure. But Retour Monarc, standing in the dim light, had never felt more exposed.
(Word count: 1,465)