~ The Haunt of Battlefields ~

[Preserver]

The acrid aroma of burnt flesh, blood, and ash was progressively fading, mixing with the smell of petrichor which meekly attempted to wash away the gore of the battlefield. Guldorand's Forested Vale, a dell rent in twain by a foaming river, had its woodlands intermingled with a veritable meadow of splintered spears, shattered tents, and corpses aplenty - many of them the colour of ash due to the Drowish bombardment.

Cordorian, Guldorandi, and Knightly banners had met - joining to defend the Brotherhood of Dawn from the villain Ssaerth, and though their strength had proven overwhelming, the strategy had been found wanting.
So it was, that after having broken a vanguard of horrid creatures and Orog berserkers, the allied defenders had started to cut through hordes of slaves - 'nothing more than puppets', they were told, 'mere victims of Drow mind-bending'. It was only when the battle had subsided, and the bombardments had claimed their toll, that trembling survivors had spoken - the slaves were conscious, forced, and far from lost to mind control.

The irony was not lost to the woman, as she walked on the hills and dells of the Forested Vale in the aftermath.
Battles were never just won - there was always what happened after: gathering the fallen, finding dead compatriots, seeking one's own pillage amidst the corpses of those who had no further use for coin o weapons. Valeria was, however, much more akin to a ghost, slithering amidst the pile of corpses in silence whilst cleaning the edge of her blade with a dry piece of cloth. Soon bloodied, that cloth was the only thing untainted by gore, such had been the woman's abandon during the massacre.
Once clean, the sword was sheathed, its hunger not fully quenched still, and instead Valeria picked a narrow misericorde knife from a scabbard by her side.

Soldiers of the Brotherhood of Dawn were far in the distance, picking their comrades' remains from the battlefield, but Valeria kept herself far away from them - that was a moment of solitude, contemplation, and relief. She started to rustle amidst corpses, her bloodied gauntlets moving aside slit flesh and cracked bones, dented armour and ripped cloth; she found a few gold coins, picked them one by one, and slid them in her pockets. Here and there, a sword or an axe: good steel, worth a pretty penny once cleansed of the battlefield grime. All went in a cloth bag by her right side.

Then came a splendidly decorated war mace, which resisted her pull. A man from the Brotherhood, his back cracked, his legs unfeeling, still held enough strength to tightly grip his weapon. He coughed, a half-mangled Drider onto his chest.

"I'm... still alive... is the battle won?" He asked, a weary smile on his face. He expected camaraderie as she noticed the Cordorian effigy on Valeria's chest. The woman looked around, then down at the man, and lined the misericorde's tip there were the man's neck and his shoulder met. "Yes." She spoke, and his lids trembled in perplexed fear, before she pushed the blade in the armour's joint and into his flesh. He died swiftly, a mercy for sure. She then took the heavy war mace and tossed it amidst the rest of her plunder.
The rush of blood in her chest made her lips twitch into a hungry smirk.

The irony, indeed, had not been lost upon Valeria.
Quite the countrary: she had trembled in smothered glee as the report came, and the slaves were proven to be innocents forced into war. To kill mind-broken automata would have made her murderous prowess trite - but enslaved fighters? That was the final brush of perfection onto that day's gore-laden painting - hurting people always brought a smile to her face.

As she walked, she happened upon a whimpering pile of corpses. She sniffed, her nostrils heavy with the abhorrent stench of the battlefield, and picked the nearby butt end of a cracked spear to poke at the pile, till one of the many cadavers squealed with agony. A slave - perhaps unsummoned still by its Andunorian master, perhaps thought dead. He was at the bottom of the pile, half smothered by corpses and mud, with his disheveled hair in a tangle, and the tear-scraped face attempting to gaze up at the source of that aggressive poking.

He spoke words that Valeria did not understand, though she recognized them as Undercommon.
That was enough for her to mark the man as an enemy. The spear tossed away, she moved her metal tipped boot till the sole was against the man's temple. He squealed, and attempted to pull back, to withdraw - he spoke words to beg for mercy that were drowned by the swiftly falling rain. The sounds that followed were grotesque, the man's fate brought upon him with careless abandon and needless violence. He had nothing to plunder, but at least he could give his life so that Valeria could enjoy another spike of delight in her search.

Whispered words came from her blade.
"Is this not all that you wished? As you can see, I bring silvery joy - and delight to your soul. Am I not a good and fair friend?"

Valeria gently caressed the golden-ivory pommel of the sword which rested into its sheathe.
"That you are. Let us go, we have a long night ahead of us." and she regarded the rest of the battlefield and the vale in front of her - what other treasures awaited?