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Outside the Frost Walker fortress, there was still a great deal of work for Nyrielle to do.

Zedya and Ignatious were taking Ashlynn and Heila into the fortress so the Thistle Witch could tend to them in a place better suited for healing, but Nyrielle herself couldn’t join them until everything outside the fortress had been settled.

"You there, stop," Nyrielle said to the horned warrior who had been hovering at an awkward distance, seemingly torn between returning to the army and following after Ashlynn and Heila. "You’ve been attending to Heila, haven’t you?"

"Yes, Your Eternity," Kurtz said, stopping where he stood and instantly turning to kneel before the powerful vampire. "My, my daughter Emmie is her squire and I’ve sworn to stand as Lady Heila’s personal guard."

"Ignatious will look after Heila for now," Nyrielle said as her mind ran through the things that demanded her attention. "Do you know the Artificer Erkembalt and the leader of the Sorcerers of Sundered Earth, Aspakos?"

"I don’t know them, your Eternity, but I know their features enough to recognize them," Kurtz said, keeping his head lowered and hoping the answer was good enough to keep the Harbinger of Death from deciding that he was more useful as a late night snack than as a guard for Heila.

"Should I, should I fetch them here, your Eternity? "

"Yes," Nyrielle said, looking from the iridescent horns on the ground to the icy sword and finally at Hauke’s strange, vacant eyed stare. She didn’t know what had happened to the young lord but it was clear that he wasn’t well in a way that went far beyond physical ailments and before she dealt with him or the artifacts around him, she wanted the help of an expert.

"Tell them to bring containers for dangerous relics," she added, as Kurtz stood to leave. "And perhaps tools to break a curse."

As Shubnalu’s pupil, Nyrielle was intimately familiar with her teacher’s personal collection of Blood Curses and she’d employed several of them herself over the years.

As the Harbinger of Death, her own Kiss of the Void could be used to bestow a number of haunting curses that would slowly grind a person’s sense of self and purpose away.

When Nyrielle looked at Hauke, he reminded her of someone afflicted by one of her curses, as though he had given up entirely on life or had his soul completely hollowed out, leaving nothing but a shell.

But if that was the case, she would have expected his horn to have dulled, growing paler than the glittering iridescent horns next to him that indicated some life still remained in them, even after Ashlynn severed their connection to the young lord.

Unfortunately, with a rich heritage of vampiric curses, she’d never had a need to study the curses employed by Frost Walker sorcerers or anyone else for that matter.

While she could have probed at Hauke to determine if there was anything left of the young lord to save, she’d seen enough traps woven into curses set by Shubnalu to know that it was better to rely on an expert as long as she had one available.

Once she heard what Erkembalt had to say, then she would make a decision about how to handle the young Frost Walker lord, the dangerous ancestral horns and the powerful sword they had bestowed on him.

Until then, she resolved herself to wait, no matter how much she wanted to rush through things in order to return to Ashlynn’s side.

Moments later, while Nyrielle stood waiting for the Kurtz to return with Artificer Erkembalt and Aspakos, a worn and bloody figure approached her, breaking the silence that surrounded Nyrielle since she Kurtz left at a run.

"Your Eternity," Tausau said, kneeling before his grandniece and lowering his head. "I’ve come to beg a favor."

"You don’t need to beg anything from me Uncle Tausau," Nyrielle said, holding her hands out to take his small, dexterous hands in hers, lifting him up off the ground. "You fought hard for me tonight," she said, gently running a hand over his bloodied fur. "Whatever you need, just ask."

"Four of my progeny died tonight, your Eternity," Tausau said with more heat in his voice than he’d meant to use. His ears twitched in frustration as feelings that had been long dead warred within his chest. He’d known when he joined Nyrielle that some of his progeny would die, many of them were weak even by the standards of ordinary Eldritch warriors, much less vampires, but he hadn’t expected them to fall so soon, before even reaching the Vale of Mists.

"We’ve taken three off the walls," he continued in a voice that shook with the strain of holding back the tears he wasn’t willing to let fall yet. "But Laya fell into the chasm below. If we cannot retrieve her body by sunrise..."

"I understand," Nyrielle said, interrupting her granduncle before he could continue. If they didn’t retrieve her by sunrise, her body would burn to ash the moment the first rays of light fell into the chasm below, leaving nothing to be retrieved the next day.

"Do you have a tradition for your progeny?" Nyrielle asked gently. The traditions for handling the dead among the Eldritch varried greatly by nation and clan, and vampires were no different. Some clung to the traditions they’d known in life while others invented entirely new traditions to honor those who finally tumbled into the abyss from the edge of the blade between life and death they’d danced on as vampires.

"The Clanless never knew the kindness or acceptance of their birth families," Tausau said softly. "Near my castle, there’s a lake deep enough that light won’t reach the bottom.

We follow the tradition of the ancient clan, sending our dead out to the deepest part of the lake on a boat before sinking it so their bones can rest among their siblings who died before them. "

"You’ve been taking in the Clanless for centuries," Nyrielle said, hesitating before she asked the question that might seem insensitive. "Will Laya have a large family waiting for her?"

"She will," Tausau said, his face crumbling as the dam holding back his tears finally burst. "Not just those who survived to become my progeny, but all the ones who died in the attempt as well. When this is over... I’ll take them all home..."

"I’ll find her," Nyrielle promised, folding her arms around her weeping uncle and wrapping her soft wings around his large, bearish frame. "And until you can return her to her family, she can rest in Grandsire Torbin’s crypt. My family will watch over yours for as long as you need."

Atop the walls, Savis watched his younger brother crumple into Nyrielle’s comforting embrace with a complicated expression on his face. Years ago, he would have known what to do to comfort the younger vampire in times like this.

As the first and strongest among Hamdi’s progeny, he had once cared for all of his siblings like true family, but he’d been closer to Tausau and Torbin than any of the others that came along in the centuries that followed.

But now, as he watched his soldiers clear away the bodies of their own fallen he felt nothing but frustration that they had died in battle against an ally, weakening them before they could burry their claws in the flesh of the humans Nyrielle had brought them here to fight.

He’d forgotten, he realized, what it meant to mourn a loss.

Frustration he could understand, shame and anger as well.

But when was the last time he mourned? He didn’t know, but he was certain it had been so long ago that Nyrielle was little more than a child at the time. Until today, that hadn’t bothered him.

Yet now, standing atop the walls and watching Tausau and Lady Nyrielle share a tender moment he realized that there was another feeling in his heart that hadn’t quite died yet. Now, more than ever in the past several centuries, Savis felt alone.

In High Fen City, he’d looked down on Tausau when his younger brother said that Lady Nyrielle might one day share the gift with him that she’d shared with Tausau. Now, he was beginning to wonder what he might need to do to receive that blessing from her as well.