Mercy's Quandary

Ancalen had fallen. Zaeren, captain of the guard, tore along the fortress halls, searching for stragglers. Against the thunder of crumbling stone, her armour crunched and crackled, sparkling in the rippling firelight. A cloud of rubble tore through the passageway, the ground beneath her feet quaking. She barely balanced herself on the wall and her spear, choking on the dust. The way was blocked, the only alternative being the stairs to the dungeons. That was fine, that way led to the siege tunnels - she still had an escape route. The rest of her company, though separated by the ruined outer wall, might yet reach the exit. They would rendezvous on the mountainside. She held her hopes and prayers on that thought.

Finding a torch to light her way, she headed into the depths, with the battle still raging overhead. Hit by the foul stench, she barrelled down the narrow corridor, heart pounding, and her heaving breaths howling over the splashes of her boots against the flooded stone. Hands wrapped around the cell bars lining the left wall, screaming at her to let them out. She doubled back, teeth gripped together. They were petty bandits and thugs - the fortress their temporary prison until they could be moved to the capital for proper processing. A few could have been destined for the chopping block, but most would probably just receive forced labour. She couldn't bring herself to condemn them to a senseless death.

"Divines, don't make me regret this..." She dove to the wall, clattered the keys off the table of the guards' station, and plunged it into the lock of the cell. "Go! Follow the wall around to the right!" The first lot raced by her, hurrying into the siege tunnels. She went to the next cell and did the same, with one of the younger pickpockets actually thanking her as he passed. One by one, she released her prisoners, sparing them a terrible end.

When she arrived at the last cell, she froze, catching her breath... The creature reached its arms to her, its eyes desperately meeting hers. It watched her hesitate, reeling itself in.

"Of course... You offer them mercy, but not me?"

She took a step away, gripping her spear in both hands. Her stare remained resolute, blue and bound to the gaze of the retched filth on the other side of the bars.

"You..." She gasped, straightening her posture. "I'm sure you have nothing to be scared of. That thing out there... It's one of your lot. A friend of yours, eh?"

They shook their head with a slight grin. "If they were, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Whoever your foe out there may be, they seek my demise as much as yours."

"You expect me to believe that?" She spat at their feet.

"You're still here..." They raised their hands, storming back into their cell. "Fine, leave and save yourself while you can. By the sounds of it, you only have a few minutes left."

Zaeren snapped out of her trance, turning to carry on her way. The ceiling overhead trembled, cracking the tunnel supports and spewing more powder over her head. The prisoner remained locked away, taking a perch on the straw and skin make-shift bed on the floor. Darkness crept back into the path outside as Zaeren's footsteps dissipated... Only to return a few moments later.

They looked to see her staring down at them once more.

"No... You can't stand the thought of me perishing beneath fallen debris instead of facing your kind's judgement."

She snarled. "No, I can't stand the thought of you escaping and having us need to track you down again." Her lip curled into a smirk. "So maybe I should just kill you now to be sure?"

"Go ahead, if you have the means to slay me. Is that spear of yours adamantine?"

"Tsch." Zaeren stepped back.

"Thought not. How were you planning on finishing me off then?"

"I know there are other ways of killing your kind."

They counted on their fingers. "Yes, though not as many as there are for yours. You could try... Suffocation, or incineration. Take your pick. Though without adamantine weapons or hellfire, you'd probably have trouble with either of those."

"Then I'll take you with me. I'll drag you behind me, and the rest of my company can finish you off."

They chuckled. "You're wasting a lot of precious time talking about it instead of just doing it." Their head cocked to the side. "But how do you know I won't rip your throat out the second you unlock the door?"

She tightened her grip on her spear, grinding her teeth together.

"I suggest you get out of here while you still can. If this tunnel doesn't cave in first, that beast out there will find you. So leave, or if you prefer, I can at least offer you a quick death."

"You Skinshifters are all the same. You're monsters, you deserve extinction."

"We prefer 'Mhazkari' if you don't mind. And we're no more monsters than your kind."

She threatened her weapon in their direction. "You've slaughtered hundreds of my people!"

"And you thousands of mine. What's your point?"

"Gah!" Zaeren kicked the wall, pacing back and forth. Why was she still there? She could have been safely outside already, reunited with her company and on to the capital to send for reinforcements. Instead she was wasting her time on that creature. It had taken enough effort to trap the brute.

She sneered at it, scrutinising its twisted appearance. It was almost human-like, ambiguously so, though it was uncanny enough to be identified as an imposter. Each of its limbs was just a little too long, joints would extend a bit too far, and its torso was too wide for how slender and emaciated it appeared. But that façade was only one of many. They were dubbed 'Skinshifters' for a reason - they had the ability to change their form into that of any animal whose blood they'd drunk. It was thought that no man had seen their true form, still it was believed to be as grotesque as their habits. They were usually quite good at imitating people, but if left to go hungry for long enough, like that one had, their appearance would slip.

Zaeren's guard had caught it hiding in a cave after a string of mysterious deaths across the surrounding countryside. It had been starving, and desperate, had made a number of fatal mistakes that led them directly to its hideout. Since capture, its disguise had waned, until it was but a husk of its former self, somehow hanging on to its false face.

Yet they remained remarkably difficult to kill. They could not die of malnutrition, only weaken, and their skin couldn't be pierced by anything other than adamantine weapons. Hellfire was one alternative, though remarkably expensive to create, since it used tallow rendered from a chimera to produce a flame that supposedly burned as hot as the sun.

Zaeren knew that was why such creatures were usually destroyed in the capital, where hellfire was in greater supply. But they had been told to starve it first - too much could go wrong on the road and it could have escaped by many means at full strength.

The attack on the fortress came at such a time that was surely too convenient to be coincidence. Another one of those fiends was out there, drunk on the blood of a wyvern - they knew it was undoubtedly a Skinshifter because they famously became crazed on the blood of any creature larger than them. With something as big as a wyvern, they would go completely rabid, and unable to properly regulate their form, they had extra or missing features compared to their source.

Zaeren herself had been fortunate enough not to have witnessed such an attack before, though she recalled one fateful winter when she had been training in the capital. The city had welcomed refugees from a town ransacked by two ravenous shifters, housing them at the keep beside the barracks. She remembered their expressions, and how their children's screams echoed across the city each night as they awoke from nightmares.

Just thinking about it sent a shiver down her spine, and she held her blade defensively, arms shaking.

"You know... All this could easily be avoided." The creature muttered.

She forced a laugh. "You what? How?"

"Mhazkari were a creation of your kind. Your ancestors kept us, cared for us, made sure we were fed-"

"Sorcerers and witches..." Zaeren's lip curled. "You were a mistake, and so were they."

"So you decided to slay them all. My people were children; lost, scared, distraught. Our parents had been taken away from us, and we became quarry to you. Monsters who stalk the night and drain the blood of the innocent, while each day your people needlessly spill blood over land and coin. Do you think we relish in our curse?" They shot their hand up, pointing towards the ceiling. "This is what happens when your kind interferes with us. You kick us out of our homes, anywhere we've tried to build a life for ourselves, and push us further and further away from our hunting grounds. And what else would there be in the desolate lands you chase us to - the only other creatures built to survive in those places; wyverns, wyrms, hydra. And we might not wish to resort to it, but we are starving. I was starving."

Zaeren loosened her hold of her weapon, watching as their eyes glistened.

The creature's voice wavered. "I didn't want to be like that. For years I kept to the wilds, living off the creatures of the woodland. I never wanted to get close to humans. Then they went and felled the forest. What was I supposed to do? I can't live off rats and birds any more than your kind could survive solely on grain. We do not need to kill what we eat - you could let us live off the beasts of the wild, or allow us to rear livestock. You could keep your distance, and we could live in peace. That's all we want."

The earth shook again, more violently than before. The beast was close. Zaeren scowled, "It does not restore the lives of the people you killed."

"That was an accident. I was starving, I didn't know when to stop. But we wouldn't need to resort to that if you'd leave us alone."

She stomped her foot. "You can't speak on behalf of all your kind. You're not telling me that one out there feels the same."

"Maybe not." They held the bars in both hands, sticking their head in between. "But tell me that you aren't like the rest of yours. Be better than them, do the right thing. Release me, let me live free..."

They stared at one another for a time, as the shaking and thumping overhead grew louder and closer.

A stone hit Zaeren's hair. She glanced up, and the roof came down on top of her.

The creature struggled back to its feet, clearing its lungs of the shower of debris. When the cloud settled, they saw Zaeren on the floor, her body below her waist buried in stones and dirt. She gasped, her splintered spear and the set of keys still in her grip. Her face was covered in muck and sweat, with a drop of blood rolling down from where she'd hit her head.

"Are you okay?" They knelt on the floor, reaching out through the bars.

"I..." She tried to drag herself out. "I can't.... M-Move..."

"Hold still, if you disturb the rubble, more may fall over you."

The captain of the guard gagged on each breath, her vision blurring as she watched the creature's concerned expression. She knew they only cared because she was their only means of escape, nevertheless, she felt some comfort in it. Her torch had rolled away from her, its light fading by the second. She closed her eyes a moment. There was no pain, only numbness. She wondered how long it would take for her to die down there. No one would come looking while that beast was around, and it wouldn't go away until it found her - surely it had caught her scent by then.

Zaeren focused on the creature's hands through the cell. She hadn't noticed how young they looked before. Their fingertips were almost black, their nails splintered and raw - they had been tortured by her comrades. It seemed the rest of her unit had taken pleasure in causing them further harm and humiliation during their imprisonment. Had she known about it? Had she cared? She pondered the state of the cell, the stench, the damp. It looked human, but they had each treated it as less than; less than human, less than an animal. Yet throughout all the pain and suffering, it still tried to appeal to her better nature, it still knelt staring worriedly at her, and had asked if she was alright. Whatever hate she felt for the creature, she couldn't deny that something had urged her to linger.

She used as much strength as she could muster to push her torso up from the floor, and slid the keys in her hand over to the cell. "Just go. There's no reason for us both to die down here." She slumped back to the ground, resting her head on the cold, wet slab, and slowly succumbed to her injuries.

***

Zaeren woke to the crackle of flames and the odour of smoke. She opened her eyes to see a small campfire burning beside her feet, which along with her legs had been bandaged with leaves, and splints had been made from the shaft of her broken spear. The creature perched on the other side, doubled over a small, strange mass of fur. They were in a cave entrance, with the world beyond lit in green by a forest's dense undergrowth.

She tried sitting up, stirring the attention of the shifter. They appeared much stronger and healthier, and for a moment her heart dropped, as she feared it had made a meal of her.

"Don't worry, it wasn't your blood." They showed her the thing in their hands - a limp rat. "They aren't that good for you, but they take the edge off."

The captain gulped. "You saved me."

"Against my better judgement, yes."

"Why?"

They sighed, taking a few moments before giving an answer. "Because you stopped." They met her stare. "You could have kept walking by that cell and left me to die. But you stopped. Even if just to threaten me and tell me what you thought of my kind."

"And... Where are we now?"

"The mouth of the siege tunnels. Your company is about a mile to the east - they're headed this way to come find you." They stood. "Which means, I'll be getting out of here."

"Where will you go?"

They snickered. "You really think I'd tell you?"

She turned her head. "Guess not."

"I'll be headed someplace where I hopefully won't run into more humans, if that's any consolation." They took a few steps outside.

"Good luck out there."

They hesitated, and with a nod, they disappeared into the wilds.