Author's Notes:
Thanks again to bikoukumori, for a stellar editing job, and to fellow authors redskyes and Handley_Page for helpful additions and insight.
This is part two of four. If you've stumbled here via the tag search, I'd ask you to go and start with part one for maximum enjoyment.
And as always: Only adults having all the fun.
Part Two
"You have sent for me, sir?" Leo asked, standing at attention in the sun-flooded office of Urs the Sailor, one of the five Storm Lords ruling Storm Harbour. The aging merchant looked up from his papers and fixed Leo with a penetrating, steel-grey stare.
"Huh, who'd have thought you're that young. When I sent for a paladin, I expected a man of more years. How old are you, son?" he asked, brushing a grey strand of hair behind his ear. Leo noticed that half his earlobe was missing, the remainder had a very irregular edge to it.
"Just turned twenty-three, sir," Leo answered, blinking in the blazing early spring sun reflecting off every highly polished wood surface.
"Congrats. As I said, I was expecting someone with more battles under his belt," the older man repeated.
"I am the only paladin in Storm Harbour at the moment, sir. I am also quite capable in battle. I have beaten back the orc raid on Ivy Glen three years ago, only supported by a handful of militia and Lady Shilana, who was kind enough to lend me her magic. I have also aided this city in three battles against the Pirates-"
"- of the Shivering Rocks, I know. I have read your file. But I never imagined that the Hero of Storm Harbour was such a green whelp," the Storm Lord cut him off. Even after this sting, Leo's face remained impassive.
"Well, at least you're no vain hothead like those mercenary captains I have consulted before sending for you," Urs continued. "I have a most delicate task for you. But I'm not quite sure if you're experienced enough to tackle it."
"You'll only know if I fail, sir," Leo said, neither chagrin nor cockiness lacing his voice.
"Ah, what the heck. I can't afford to send a full mercenary company on this fool's errand and I damn well can't sacrifice our City Guard on it either. So listen, boy," Urs said, emphasizing the last word, "for this is important. We believe there's a dragon hiding somewhere around Storm Harbour and we also believe he is actively recruiting cultists in this very city, trying to subvert us. During the winter, several noble heirs were abducted, with outrageously high ransom notes left behind," the Storm Lord explained.
"Why didn't I hear about this?" Leo asked, a little confused. "I am a duty officer of the Guard, after all."
"To avoid general unrest, only a select handful of people knew. Storm Lords, senior Guard officials. No offence, lad, but you were just not important enough to know. Besides, all victims have been found whole after their parents paid up. But now, things have changed. The first dead bodies have turned up and they're not pretty." Urs rose, motioning Leo to follow.
Together, they left the office and went into the basement. Urs removed an ornately carved ring with a circular seal from his finger and pressed the seal into a certain spot on a certain sconce lining the walls of the wine cellar of his Old Harbour villa. With the clicking and rattling of a hidden mechanism, part of the wall swung inwards and the Storm Lord beckoned Leo to enter the newly revealed passage.
"Where are we going?" the paladin asked, accepting a torch the Storm Lord handed him.
"I have called for an expert who can help us discover more clues about the bodies and I want you to be there as well. Maybe we're just over-imagining things. But if you ask me, we're truly facing a dragon."
Silently, they walked through the hidden hallway, slowly tilting downwards. Leo suspected, after a few minutes, they'd end up near or below the harbour. The steady drips of moisture hitting the roughly-hewn stone floor suggested as much. Eventually, the passage ended in front of an algae-encrusted trellis gate. Urs tapped against it with his ring, and the gate creaked open. Leo looked around, taking in the shell-and-wave decor laid into the barrel ceiling.
"We must be underneath the Sea-Father's temple," he surmised.
"Yes, that's where the bodies ended up," Urs confirmed. They reached another archway, this one guarded by two men in moist-looking scale armour brandishing wickedly barbed tridents, their faces obscured by masks that made them look like antediluvian denizens of the deep, neither fish nor man.
"Has Voron arrived yet?" Urs snapped at one of the guards who nodded his head, the eyes behind the mask blazing in anger. The guards stepped aside, opening the way for Leo and the Storm Lord to proceed.
"Who's this Voron fellow? Haven't heard of him yet," Leo asked.
"A necromancer I have sent for. Should be able to tell us the cause of death. If anyone can, then Voron," Urs snickered. Leo stopped in mid-stride.
"Sir, I have to inform you-" he began
"Yes, I know. You are forbidden from associating with people of questionable character. You can rest assured, this one's with the Undertakers," the Storm Lord said, dismissing Leo's objection.
"I would prefer it if you used my Lord Death's proper title, mortal," a voice rasped from the shadows. A moment later, a pair of pale, luminescent eyes appeared in the darkness, framed by a black hood.
Leo drew his weapon, ready to smite the apparition before him. A moment later, dark robes rustled and Voron raised a pale, long-fingered hand, gesturing. The darkness surrounding the robed figure lessened somewhat and Leo noticed he wasn't facing some undead abomination but a surprisingly curvy woman, the black robe moulding itself to the shape of her wide hips and ample behind. Nevertheless, he invoked his intention-seeking magics. Voron placed her hands on her hips, cocked her head and looked up into Leo's tense face, a naughty smile playing around her thin lips.
"Satisfied? Or do you need even more evidence that I'm no evil, eeeeeevil monstrosity?" she giggled, her voice again that eerie, netherworldly rasp. With a long, curved black fingernail, she slowly parted the collar of her robe teasingly, nearly exposing her breasts.
"I-I think that's quite enough," Leo stammered, blinking away his spell.
"Has your search been ...satisfactory?" Voron purred, not bothering to close her robe again. Leo smiled in apology.
"I am sorry I doubted you," he said, addressing both his companions. "But why does Lord Death have necromancers? I thought-"
"You thought we would bring the dead back to life, admit it," Voron chuckled. "You're wrong though. Lord Death is the Keeper of the Dead, every walking corpse, every spectre haunting the night is anathema to him. It is my duty, and the duty of my fellow necromancers, to combat those which would not sleep the eternal sleep. And who better to fight the terrors of the grave than those who know the most about how they're made? The necromancers you are looking for are working alone, defying the will of the gods, or they are in league with the Triad of Evil, Lord Slaughter, Lady Desire and Lord Hatred."
"Enough theology," Urs snapped. "Now, shall we get to the task at hand?"
"Yes, let's," Voron rasped, slapping Leo's armoured behind before striding off into the darkness ahead. A few moments later, Leo and Urs joined her. Voron was standing next to two slabs of chiselled stone, upon which were the remains of two gruesomely mutilated bodies. One was little more than a barely recognizable male torso, huge teeth marks bisecting the chest from right shoulder to left hip, the other one was definitely female. Whatever had killed her had ripped her lower body off. But the killer didn't stop there, he even mutilated her breasts, the horrid wounds like a pair of grotesque, empty eye sockets. The bodies had been in the ocean for quite some time, their skin blotchy and bloated, with dozens of smaller bite marks on them from the fish who nabbed a bite in passing. Leo made a warding sign against his holy symbol, invoking the name of Lord Justice to carry him through this ordeal.
"What makes you sure these two corpses are related?" Leo asked, striding around the slabs.
"I've compared the bite marks," Voron explained, pointing to the male torso. "It's rare you get such clean ones. Whatever killed him held him with its teeth while it ripped his arms and legs off, which implies some kind of manual dexterity. This one," she indicated the female torso, "has been toyed with. See the claw marks here?" Her fingers pulled at the edge of one of the gaping chest wounds, folding the skin open like pages in a book. "And again, bite marks. Of course only one half, but there are few predators who could rip a grown human or elf to pieces like this," she purred, fingertips brushing along the serrated tear where the torso just ... ended.
"But we're here to make sure, aren't we?" Voron said. She opened her robe wider and reached into an inside pocket. As if by accident, one of her breasts was fully visible, nipple hardened. If through the chill down here or through arousal, Leo couldn't tell. He shivered. Voron withdrew a syringe from her robe, the whole apparatus nearly a foot long, most of which was the gleaming needle, and jabbed it unceremoniously into the first torso. She pulled on the plunger. Thick, almost black blood filled the tube.
"What are you doing, woman?" Leo snapped, again reaching for his hammer. "Haven't they suffered enough already?"
"Calm down, holy man," Voron hissed. "They are just lumps of flesh now; their souls have departed them. And when we're done here, I will make sure they receive a proper burial. But first, I need a bit of their blood for my magic. Only heartblood will do after all the time they're dead. Now hush, I need to concentrate."
With that, Voron turned towards a wall and chanted, the syllables sounding unwholesome and knotty. With a flourish, she squirted the blood against the wall where it stuck in a black rainbow. Slowly, drop by drop, the blood trickled down the wall, forming letters. Slender, feminine letters.
"I was Syleera, offering my body for the enjoyment of others. I was beaten. I was bound. I was fed to the dragon who tore my lower half from my upper half. But I didn't die then. I only died when he bit my head off, after inflicting terrible hurt upon me."
Leo turned to face Voron but before he could even begin to ask, she squirted the next black rainbow onto the wall, next to the other. This time the script was almost illegible, as if the deceased was barely able to write.
I was Hendar. I served the dragon. Wife and kid hungry. I stole coins for food. Dragon got angry. Killed me with teeth and claws.
"And then he ripped the poor soul limb from limb," Leo whispered.
"Well, according to legend, dragons hate nothing more than stealing," Voron rasped.
"As if we needed any more confirmation," Urs grumbled.
"Sir, whatever you may have planned – I'd like to volunteer. I want this thing punished for its crimes," Leo snarled, the fire of righteous justice burning in his eyes.
"Oh, never get between a man and his chosen prey, I say," Voron chuckled, fixing Leo with a hungry stare, her hand sliding down her front, caressing the robe-clad 'Y' formed by her thighs and her torso.
***
"Who would have thought. Dragonslayers, huh," Shilana mused, loosening the reins of her horse. The animal whinnied and accelerated. Leo flicked the reins of his heavy warhorse and trotted along behind her prancing steed.
