Chapter 443: Those Who Fell
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.