The cleanup tasted like the inside of a battlefield's mouth.
We moved through the carnage barefoot in blood, because boots were pointless now. The black earth had turned to warm, sucking mud that oozed between my toes and smelled of iron, piss, and burnt marrow. Every step made a wet, kissing sound and released little burps of steam that smelled like a butcher's shop left in the sun.
The mist had thinned to a low, drifting gauze, lit from within by the guttering fires still chewing on corpses. The light was the color of old bruises: violet, orange, sickly green where the mage's broken wards still leaked. Ash drifted down in slow, fat flakes, settling on my eyelashes, melting instantly against the heat of my skin, tasting of bone and old parchment.
Rill knelt beside a body, sawing an ear free with one of her short swords. The cartilage parted with a soft, wet crunch, like biting into a ripe pear. She dropped the trophy into a canvas sack already heavy and dripping; the fabric slapped against her thigh with every addition, leaving dark handprints of someone else's life. Her tail was matted flat with blood and sweat, the calico pattern turned monochrome rust.
Lioren moved like a ghost, silent even in the muck, cutting purse strings and finger rings from the dead hands with a thin, curved knife. Every time she bent, her braid slid forward over her shoulder, the silver now streaked charcoal and crimson, smelling of smoke and her own sharp green scent underneath. When she straightened, a necklace of Red Fang canine teeth clinked softly against her armor (warm from the body heat that wasn't there anymore).
I harvested the mage last.
His staff had snapped in half; the jawbone crown lay a few paces away, teeth still chattering in the heat. The body itself was… artistic. The fireball had cooked him from the inside out; skin split in black petals, fat still bubbling gently, the way pork crackling does when you pull it too soon from the fire. The smell was rich, obscene, sweet. I used the hem of my cloak to wrap what was left of his signet ring (still attached to a finger that came off with a soft pop like a cork). The metal was hot enough to brand the cloth.
We worked until the sack was full and heavy, until the air tasted only of cooling meat and wet ash, until the crows came back and decided we weren't done being scary yet.
Then we walked back to the wagons.
The merchants had built a small fire of their own (clean applewood that smelled like pie and safety). Someone had found an unbroken cask of the honey mead; the bung was out and the scent rolled over us like forgiveness. We dropped the sack in the dirt (it landed with a wet thud and a sigh) and simply stood there, dripping, smoking, breathing.
Rill's ears twitched once. "Thirty-three ears," she said, voice raw. "Plus the mage."
Lioren wiped her knife on her thigh, leaving a fresh red stripe. "One hundred and eighty-five gold total," she finished, soft.
The night air had gone cold enough to bite. Our breath steamed white. The firelight painted us gold and crimson and black, three devils who'd just rewritten the map.
I looked at my hands: soot-ingrained, blood under the nails, the fire-opal still glowing like it was proud. My tongue tasted of copper, smoke, and something sweet I refused to name.
Rill stepped close, pressed her forehead to my shoulder, and laughed once (quiet, shaky, perfect). Lioren leaned in on the other side, cool fingers finding the pulse at my wrist, grounding.
We smelled like the end of the world and the beginning of everything.
And we stood there in the fire-warm, ash-dusted, blood-slick, and richer than sin, while the Hollow exhaled around us and finally admitted who the real monsters were
Night settled like a wet wool blanket, heavy and cold.
The fire had burned down to a bed of pulsing coals that breathed orange every time the wind shifted. The smell was different now: applewood sweetness burned away, leaving only the deep, animal scent of scorched fat and marrow from the bodies we hadn't bothered to drag far. Every few minutes a pocket of fat in a corpse would pop, sharp as a finger-snap, sending up a brief blue flame and a whiff of cooking meat that turned the stomach and made it growl at the same time.
We sat on a fallen log, shoulders touching, passing the mead cask in slow, reverent silence. The honey liquor had warmed from our hands; it slid down like liquid sunlight, thick and cloying, leaving the tongue sticky and the throat burning sweetly. My lips were cracked; the mead stung every split and tasted like forgiveness anyway.
Blood had dried stiff in my hair, pulling at the scalp when I moved. Rill's fur was matted into spikes; when she leaned against me I could feel the crust crack and flake away, little black snow that smelled of iron and campfire. Lioren had undone her braid entirely. Her hair hung in damp silver ropes, ends singed and smelling faintly of sulfur where a stray ember had kissed it. Every breath she took lifted a cool ribbon of air across my neck that smelled of pine needles, bowstring wax, and the clean green underneath that was only hers.
The sack of ears sat between my boots, leaking slow, dark syrup that soaked into the log and steamed gently. Thirty-three soft, rubbery trophies, still warm. I could feel the weight of them even when I wasn't looking, like they were whispering numbers in a language made of wet thumps.
Somewhere in the dark an owl finally decided the night was safe again and called once, low and mournful. The sound floated over the clearing and died against the mist still clinging to the treetops.
Rill's tail curled around my calf, slow and heavy, the tip twitching every time the fire popped. Lioren's hand rested on my thigh, palm up, fingers curled loose; dried blood had turned her lifelines black. I laced my fingers through hers without thinking. Her skin was cool, mine fever-hot from the fire and the fight.
None of us had spoken in an hour. We didn't need to. The night tasted of copper, honey, gunpowder sweat, and the particular quiet that only comes after you've killed everything that needed killing.
Above us the stars were sharp enough to cut. The smoke rose straight and slow, carrying tiny burning flecks upward like offerings. One landed on the back of my hand, hissed against a half-healed burn, and went out.
I took another pull of mead, felt it pool warm in my stomach, and finally said the only thing that mattered, voice rough as broken glass:
"We're keeping the mage's jawbone. Trophy."
Rill's laugh was soft, cracked, perfect. Lioren's fingers tightened once in mine.
The fire settled lower, coals the color of fresh blood.
We stayed there until the mead was gone and the cold finally won, three silhouettes outlined in slowly dying light, breathing the same smoke-thick air, dreaming the same beautiful, terrible dreams while the Ashen Hollow held its breath around us and waited to see what monsters do when the killing is over and the gold is still warm in their hands.