Three.
Ezhno was becoming nervous, something Catori had been monitoring for hours. Ey tried not to say sorry again – Ez had told em three times to stop apologizing for something that wasn't eir fault.
Still, they both knew what was taking them so long; half-carrying Catori until ey could regain enough energy to walk on eir own wasn't helping them speed by. Especially since they were stumbling along dozens of winding paths, and had already narrowly avoided falling into hidden goblin caverns twice.
It was noon, and they'd barely made it through the initial mountain pass. They should've passed through hours ago, or so Ezhno was mumbling. Catori almost didn't mind, though, since ey was close enough to Ez to feel every grunted wisp of breath tingle down eir spine, to enjoy the scratches of Ez's horns and the tickle of his blonde hair wisping against eir cheek in the breeze.
Ezhno barely allowed them a pause when they hit the last metal step of the miles long staircase that they'd been climbing. It had been the first of many territorial gates that the mountain dragons set into place centuries ago.
Mountain dragons, especially those of the To-Mai Pass, were notoriously militant and private creatures, which was why Catori needed a guide to begin with – that, and the fact that Ezhno had come in handy when the goblins had burrowed underneath the best security the mountain dragons had put up. Tori didn't like to think about what would have happened to em last night, if Ezhno hadn't been there to save em.
“Aren't these checkpoints usually manned?” Catori asked, eir eyes flitting from side to side as ey approached the large gateway. It was a large, wooden door, easily one hundred feet into the air, braced with iron and what looked like intricate gold. According to word-of-mouth, it had been made millenia ago, as an offering to Dakis, the god of smithery.
Either way, it was an imposing sight.The intimidation was usually given some extra strength by the large, armed teams that staffed these points. The door itself took at least five people at once to crank backwards – or so Ezhno had bragged, on their way up. Yet it was already open, with nobody in sight.
After double-checking the crook of the staircase that they'd ended up on, Ezhno ducked through the crack. His knife was brandished and glinting in the noon-day sun as he moved. Catori peered after him, convincing eirself that eir legs wouldn't wobble out from underneath em. The combination of constant travel, deathwork, Ezhno's breath on eir ears, and the scare last night were wreaking havoc on eir stability.
Ezhno poked his head back out, and nodded stiffly in Catori's direction. “Looks like it's passable,” he grunted, a curiously new look of consternation dancing through his eyes. A breeze leaked through the door, bringing tremors back through Catori's knees. There was death in there – strong, cold, and certain.
“What happened?” Ey knew ey had to go forward – both to investigate the deaths as was eir duty in the Order, and because they didn't have enough daylight left to head back down and try the pass from a different checkpoint. Catori wasn't looking forward to it; too much deathwork without enough time to recover could wreak havoc on a two-spirit's already fragmented soul.
“Come see for yourself,” Ezhno replied, extending his still-burnt right hand to help Catori with eir balance. Ey gratefully took it and squeezed through the gate after only a little maneuvering. Thankfully, the iron spikes of the gate only tore small holes in eir mostly skin-tight clothing.
The minute ey stepped inside, Catori wished ey hadn't. The smell of death was even more putrid inside the stronghold than it had been when it had surrounded Ezhno seconds before. Bodies were strewn everywhere, parts thrown haphazardly around the once-grand stone-and-metal surroundings. Blood, flesh, and feces were sprayed everywhere, and yet no screams of agony were crying out to Tori, no mind-wilting pain pulsated through eir veins.
It was a slaughter-house, alright. An already worked-over mass grave. “Must've been the goblins,” Ezhno offered, his tenor reverberating off of the close walls. His eyes twitched around at the echo, and they both glanced into the barracks, where more death almost certainly lay. Shaking his head, Ez pulled Catori closer, whispering in eir ear. “Be careful. There might be something still – still around here.” He paused, and Catori could feel eir throat working against the back of eir head, rapidly swallowing.
“I should check for survivors. I can go out while you do your thing.” Ey paused, and a clink in the distance caused Ezhno's arms to reflexively tighten around Catori's midsection. “But I'm not leaving you alone here. Knowing you, you might try to grab an arm and end up knocking over the entire gate.”
The last bit sounded much more decisive, and considerably less like Ezhno was going to be sick all over Catori's swaying form. Still, the fact that he hadn't already lost his lunch told Tori volumes about the man at eir side.
“This isn't the first slaughter you've seen.” It wasn't a question, even though Catori made sure to pivot in Ezhno's arms, desiring a response. Ez lifted his head, but didn't drop his arms from around Catori's hips. Tori found that ey liked them there, their strength reassuring em and keeping em from tumbling.
Ezhno was pale and sweating, giving off the same emptiness that he had whenever Catori had tried to confront him about his personal life. Ey wasn't sure if it was a reassuring blankness, or not.
“I already said my brother used to be in the army. Well, so was I.”
His eyes faded out and then refocused on Catori, as if seeing him for the first time. His hands tightened and then relaxed around Catori's waist. “Why aren't you zoning out on me, like last night?”
Tori struggled to keep eir whispers equally soft, to avoid drawing any more attention from the shifting shadows of death that surrounded them. “Somebody's already set them free. All of them.” Catori licked eir dry lips, coming away with the taste of rancid feces. “Thank Bali.”
Catori couldn't tell how long the dragons had been like this, now without either a soul or the proper ritual accouterments, but even a few minutes like with their soul trapped in a body like these would've been inhumane.
Ezhno's brow furrowed. “I thought only deathworkers can do that.”
“Yeah,” Catori agreed. They stared at the slaughter around them, wondering which one of them would be the first to break the silence. It ended up being Catori. “But no deathworker worth their oaths would leave them out here, like this.” Tori shivered, and examined the amount of work burying and gathering – it could take all night. Time they didn't have, especially now that their safe haven was a death factory.
Ezhno shivered in Catori's grasp, despite the heat. “There's got to be dozens of corpses here. Maybe whoever it was didn't have enough time?” The addendum of 'like us' was as clear as if he'd whispered it.
“Where's the nearest town?”Catori asked.
“It depends on where we're going. You never said,” Ezhno reminded em. It wasn't exactly the time for it, not with the agony of death sweeping around them in the breeze. Birds swooped and scuttled around them, picking off the remains with wet snaps. “Either way, we should leave soon.”
Catori shifted from foot to foot, feeling Ezhno's fingers brush against eir sides as light as the tepid breeze around them. Ey wanted to go – the memories of last night, of the fangs and the fear, the exhaustion and the anger, were too close. But eir vows were as ingrained in em as eir name, and Catori couldn't break the promise ey'd made to Bali, either. “We'll go as soon as I bury everybody.”
Ezhno didn't exactly take it well. “No.”
“I can't leave --”
“You can and you're going to,” Ezhno interrupted. He shook his head, and tightened his grip on Catori, as if ey was going to dash away as soon as the opportunity presented itself. “We can't stay here for another hour. And burying everyone'll take days.”
“If I leave them, there won't be anything left. Like last night.” Despite the exhaustion burning through eir body, Catori jerked away. Breaking Ezhno's grip on eir waste, ey stumbled backwards, slipping on an organ, and sprawling back into a squishy pile of corpses. Eir head slammed back against the pavement – and then everything slowed down.
Ezhno called for em, lunging to grab em; a box snapped underneath Catori's back; rot-eating bugs took flight around em; shooting pain erupted; howling entered Catori's ears; and a soul called out for Catori's help, for salvation.