Temptation of the Zombie Butterfly : 0

Western Coast of the Salt Sea, First month of Grey Skies, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

Eris Ella-Cyrus, The Raven of the Wasteland, stood at the top of the salt dune looking down at the remnants of the farming outpost as it smoldered like a pile of discarded pipe ash in the purple light of the fading day. The smell of bubbling man fat drifted up and mingled with the oppressive saline taste of the breeze. Cyri shook her head and spat to remove the taste of human barbecue from her mouth. She could not hear the fires. The whistling of the winds across the salt dunes sucked all sound away before the ear could catch it.

Behind Cyri, a woman wearing dun brown layers of overlapping cloaks and veils stood with an expectant posture.

"Will you do it?" Asked the woman, "People say you walk with the Great Wyrm of the Winter Sky. People say nothing can stop you."

Cyri didn't answer. The woman in brown watched the Raven closely. Eris Ella-Cyrus dressed in black with white and purple highlights, dyed leather and lacquered bamboo and precursor shell armour at the shoulders and helm. Her collar consisted of hundreds of black iridescent raven feathers. She had decorated her antique breastplate with ancient Raven motifs and with the actual skulls of ravens. The woman in brown shivered and looked away from the other woman.

"Please," the woman in brown continued, "My daughters, my sons, my husbands. Everything is gone. My tribe is dead. Our caravans stolen, and fields picked clean. They broke down the barriers, the fields are contaminated by the salt dunes now. Nothing will ever grow here again. Three generations of work reclaiming the soil and rebuilding the fertility of the land, all destroyed by a score of men and a handful of war beasts. They took the corn to feed their beasts. They took the dead to eat for themselves. I have nothing left. I will be a scavenger now, a wanderer in the salt wastes."

Cyri spoke.

"Then why are asking me to hunt them down? If there is nothing to recover, what will you gain?"

"I want them to suffer," The woman said.

"Oh?" Cyri responded.

"They took my life from me. And they will do it again, to other families trying to heal the wastelands. They will tear away at those doing the work of the Precursors. And they will destroy these little spots of hope again and again. And they will do it to feed their war beasts for just a few more days or weeks. I gain nothing, because they have destroyed my ability to gain. People neither of us will ever meet will be the ones who gain by your actions. I'm not asking for my own benefits. I'm asking for others. All I get is vengeance, and that's about the same comfort as a handful of salt for the thirsty."

Cyri nodded, "Vengeance is a wagon wheel that rolls straight to the Blightlands. If you'd only wanted vengeance, I wouldn't be helping you now."

"So you'll do it?"

"Scavengers are scavengers the world over," Cyri said, "Doesn't matter whether they call themselves raiders or junk dealers, warlords or high priests; they're all parasites. And you deal with parasites the same way every time, you scrape them off or burn them out. What was the name of the gang? What was their sigil? Their banner?"

"Their banner was a circle of Five skulls and a wheel of fire. Black on red and white. They called themselves the Forgotten Dead."

Cyri nodded, "I don't know them, but somebody will."

"There is one other thing," The woman in brown added as she stared at her feet, "They seemed to be looking for something. They kept talking about a butterfly, screaming in our faces, demanding to know where it was. I don't even know what they meant. There hasn't been a butterfly in a hundred years at least. Any butterfly still around would have to be a ghost, or a zombie."

The woman's voice cut off abruptly and Cyri noticed that the woman was now staring off into the distance. Cyri turned to look, but could see nothing of note.

"Whatever your zombie butterfly is, if it's important I'll discover its secret and if it isn't I'll find them all the same."

The woman lowered her eyes and refused to meet Cyri's gaze, "Yes, of course. Thank you."

When the woman in brown looked up she saw an empty space beside her, and in the distance the vanishing form of Eris Ella-Cyrus, the Raven of the Wasteland; Daughter of of the Mad King Cyrus the Apostate and of the Warlady Vanora the Stone Wolf, as known as the Butcher of Brinebarrow.