Urges Unearthed [Preview]

	“Hey, Pieter.” The words came from a small, reedy voice little more than a meter off the ground.
	The man named Pieter turned his head over his left shoulder. He was a hulking heap of a man, made more hulking by the plate metal pauldrons and painted breastplate that covered his wide, muscular frame. “Mmm?” he said. He didn’t stop moving but kept walking through the dry underbrush.
	“You dropped something, again,” squeaked Rat-Rank, the goblin. Rat-Rank’s short legs were working double-time to keep pace with Pieter’s longer strides, and his sandaled feet slapped on the dry packed dirt and dead grass.
	Pieter stopped, the chainmail hauberk under his breastplate jingling to a stop as well. He patted his belt and rucksack, trying to determine what it was he dropped. It wasn’t his sword, nor his shield, nor his bedroll…
	Rat-Rank tossed a purse in one hand, the small leather sack clanking and heavy with coin. Pieter shot a gaze like dragon’s breath at the little green figure. He had to bend over to retrieve his property, as Rat-Rank held the coinpurse at his own waist level.
	“That little joke of yours is losing novelty fast,” scolded Pieter, “But I’m losing patience faster, and I’d advise you to stop before one of them runs dry.” The paladin’s footfalls in the brush were heavier and faster now.
	Irwaen, a stoic elven mage and the only other traveler, gave Rat-Rank a shake of the head and a more tempered look of admonishment.
	Rat-rank shrugged. He was sneaking a coin out of Pieter’s purse each time he pulled that joke (seven times so far), and it felt like there was a lot more amusement left in that heavy, clinking bag. “What happens then?” he asked, pulling a sweaty lock of jet-black hair from his round face.
	“What, when I run out of patience?” began Pieter, casting a glance back at Rat-Rank, “Well, when I run out of patience, I will let you stand in front, so you can be the first to face whatever beasts or brigands stand in our way.”
	“So, when you run out of patience, you lose your hero complex.”
	Pieter snorted and quickened his pace. The trio was heading uphill now, through dirt growing looser and rockier. Irwaen said nothing but adopted the well-worn expression he always did in these moments. It was the tight-lipped grimace of a man tired of watching his village always catch fire, but secretly grateful that it was never his house in flames.
	Rat-Rank continued, “You really get off on that shtick, don’t you? Pointing your sword at everything, yelling that it’ll have to go through you and your shield before it can sully your honor or tarnish the kingdom’s goodness or whatev-”
	“Listen here, you little gobshite,” said Pieter, still not turning around to face Rat-Rank, “You count yourself how many times I drew my sword in your defense, how many times I pointed it at dangers that you aroused. Count those times up! You’ll run out of your grubby little fingers and toes well before you finish.”
	Irwaen’s grimace grew tighter, and he tugged down the large, floppy brim of his pointed felt hat.
	“That’s my point,” said Rat-Rank, “You don’t have to be so overprotective – either of me, or of Irwaen. But you are. And what’s more, you go about in way that smacks of self-indulgence, self-aggrandizement.”
	“Puh! Big words from a small lad.” Pieter spat into the grass. “What if I want to be this overprotective, eh? What then?”
	Rat-Rank sputtered at this, not finding a properly cutting comeback soon enough.
	“Stay your damned tongues for two seconds, you two,” cut in Irwaen. The unexpected interruption silenced Pieter and Rat-Rank more than the elf’s actual words, but both men still looked at him and waited for him to say what he needed to say.
	Irwaen took a few breaths in the newfound peace and quiet, then pointed up to the top of the ridgeline. “The stricken village is just over this crest, so you two had best put your squabbles to rest now.”

***

	No one knew exactly what had befallen the village of Yamby. The first sign of trouble occurred one week ago, when Yamby’s potato cart never showed up at the village market. The roads were swept for signs of bandits or beasts, but none were found. It seemed at first that Yamby just never sent their potato harvest to the keep. However, woodsmen who hunted near the village suddenly went missing, and anyone sent to visit Yamby and check in never returned. The village was still standing; no plumes of smoke were spotted on the horizon so it clearly had not been razed or raided.
	With magic or other unusual fuckery clearly afoot, the keep’s burgomaster called upon this local trio to investigate.
	Irwaen sat on a boulder at the crest of the hill and squinted at Yamby. A cloth was laid out one of the flatter portions of the stone, and several magical implements were laid out on top of that: crystals, an hourglass, a scrying stone, and a well-weathered leather-bound tome. Rat-Rank sat on the boulder with Irwaen, surveying the surrounding lands. Pieter sat a few yards back down the slope. The paladin was going about his typical battle preparation rites and preferred to do these in solitude.
	“It’s not a beast, or not a typical predator,” said Irwaen aloud.
	“No?”
	“No.” Irwaen kept his spyglass pressed to his eye. “The village dogs and cats are still walking around town, though the streets are otherwise empty. Can’t be a poisoned well either, or they’d be dead, too.”
	“Ah.” Rat-Rank cast a glance at the dormant village, but his gaze was quickly drawn back to Pieter. The paladin had stripped out of his armor down to the waist. While his hauberk was draped over the outstretched limb of a low tree, his pauldrons and breastplate were being thoroughly shined. Pieter’s own trunk-like limbs whipped the buffing cloth over the steel plates in small, fast circles. In the high afternoon sun, a light sheen of sweat already glinted on the man’s biceps.
	“Certainly not the work of common killers, either. A whole village goes dead in midsummer, you’d smell something. Blood on the air, putrefaction.”
	Rat-Rank crinkled his nose and sniffed but kept looking at Pieter. “Sulphur,” he said, absent-mindedly.
	“Sulphur?” asked Irwaen, setting down the spyglass and taking a long whiff of the breeze.
	“You smell that, too, right? I promise it’s not me.”
	“Yes, I’m catching notes of Sulphur. And ash, as well.” Irwaen thumbed through his tome and began thinking aloud. “Demons indeed could fit the bill, here. If some lesser demon slipped from its planes and into this one, it’d try to return home… but, failing that, it would adopt and adapt to its new habitat…”
	Rat-Rank spaced out as Irwaen flipped through more pages of his book. Pieter was sharpening his sword now, a long and thick length of hardened steel. It wasn’t forged by the finest smiths in all the land, nor was bestowed to Pieter by anyone important. But it was well-tempered and well cared-for, and a deadly instrument in the paladin’s strong hands. The still-shirtless paladin ran his whetstone along the blade’s edge, squinting and checking every now and again for sharpness. All the while, Pieter sang a hymn to himself under his breath.
	“…of course, we probably aren’t facing a Malice or Abhorrence demon, here, as we’ve already ruled out most violent acts… and not a Pestilence demon either – the animals are alright. So that leaves only a few possibilities. Namely… Sloth, or Lust. Something that preys upon the body’s basest instincts, the mind’s fundamental desires.”
	“What? Lust?” Rat-Rank gabbed, his attention caught, and reverie broken.