TRUTH AMONGST THE ASHES

POV: Ivory Wells

Standing on the brink and peering out over the blackened, smoking wreckage that once had been Callum's mountain stronghold, the roaring winds tore at my hair. Thick miasmic tendrils of smoke and ash spun around, burning my eyes acridly.

A terrible, hollow memorial to the terrible struggle that had waged here just hours before, the last weak tongues of flame lapped at the skeletal ruins of the main castle off in the distance. A conflict that, by all accounts, ought never to have taken place.

Turning, every muscle in my body still coiled with a hyper-tense expectation as my boots crushed on a layer of trash and waste. The combat had stopped, yet some ingrained part of me refused to let its vigil slack. Not until I responded with solutions. Real answers this time, not lies and half-truths buried under rivers of blood.

Standing silhouetted against the ghastly backdrop, Darrel's towering body seemed to suck in the ashen gloom until it seemed as little more than a darker bl