Sect of Flies
Donal had been riding for days, and each day as he pushed further into the desert, the air had become more and more stifling, the sun more and more obscured by a haze. He had been told what was coming, the hunter had sent his hawk ahead and the news was never good. It was on the third day that he began to see the corpses, animal, human, in one hollow the bodies of a handful of dwarfs, all disembowelled, with their tongues cut out and their eye sockets empty. As each league passed, the swarms of flies grew more dense, the buzzing louder, and the sickly sweet smell stronger and thicker. Many of the men had taken to soaking rags in wine and tying it around their faces, but even the close smell of fermented grapes and spices did little to stave off the air, that had itself become a messenger from the Fields of Perdition, one that could not be met with sweat and steel.
