Chapter 77: Interlude: Brigit and Darlae
"It’s a ruin." Darlae climbed up on top of a dirty pile of stone, peering around.
"I’m aware of that, honey, the question is why is it a ruin?"
"I’m more curious about why the walls are intact. It’s like they didn’t want anyone messing around with... this," Darlae gestured at the piles of broken, half-grown-over buildings. The crushed wastes of what had once been a castle town. More of a small city.
Brigit joined her atop the hill, planting a hand on her wife’s back. "If the warning we got at the last town is any indication..."
"One woman can’t just destroy a whole city, can she? Surely she had to have help at least," Darlae argued, kicking an errant brick. It clattered into another half-exposed wall before dropping into a muddy divot.
On their journey, they’d switched to faster means now that Kir was safely tucked away at the Academy. A pair of fast raptors waited outside the walls for them, tied to the twisted metal of a steel portcullis that had burst outward from its gate.
"If she had an angel helping her, sure, but none of the witnesses said otherwise. I think we should believe them. Halie destroyed this entire city... alone. The question is why. And what happened to Kir’s mother..." Brigit said. She looked around, her eyes tracing the low hills that were once houses.
"The timeline matches up though. Halie was here just over a year after I adopted Kir," Brigit bit her thumb.
According to the witnesses, the giant woman had simply appeared one day. And then, as if she were everywhere, she’d begun the destruction of the city. Most confirmed that she’d first appeared before the healer’s hospice, near one of the city gates. It was impossible to identify any structure now aside from the mound that was the castle.
Her attacks drove the citizens south, in the middle of winter, and every challenger who tried to stop her was killed where they stood. Yet as vicious as the sudden attack had been, surprisingly few civilians died. Halie made no effort to stop the evacuees, preferring to methodically destroy every structure as she worked her way around the city.
The one thing she said was to the marquis and his entourage when he tried to talk her down after losing most of his soldiers.