"Six? You're still claiming six? Khutul, by Baal's strong right arm, two of those were already dead from my arrows. I don't even understand why it matters! Four is a very impressive number of mudborn to have sent to the ceaseless dark^1."

It was a conversation as old as the kharubbal itself. How many mudborn had you slain? It wasn't particularly interesting even to those actually having the argument, but it was something to talk about. Something to keep the kharubbites boastful and brave instead of silent, which could allow lingering fears to multiply.

The kharubbites had spent the last several hours bobbing and weaving through ravines and wooded lands, the kinds of terrain where the mudborn on horseback would fear to tread and were unlikely to see them. Now though they were cresting a hill in the hopes that they might spot a village whose inhabitants they could let know weren't welcome on Varic land.

"Your arrows? Shet you Ekam Krsna,² you wouldn't have even had the target if I wasn't engaging them. It was my spear that did the real work, so-"

Khutul fell silent in response to a raised arm and fist from his uncle, Bulaal, who had been on many kharubbal before and was leading this expedition by virtue of that experience. Bulaal, a few dozen paces ahead, then gestured to the group to join him at the top of the hill.

What they saw atop that crest surprised them, for they saw a great pillar of smoke rising from the Earth behind some other hill in the distance. The kind of smoke that spoke of deliberate destruction... or perhaps a bonfire.

"We'll investigate," Balaal told the group authoritatively, "but we can't just go rushing in. It's possible they're lighting bonfires just to attract us. Do your best to stay out of sight until we know what's what."

It took nearly two hours to reach the source of the smoke, the group of two dozen kharubbites buzzing with excitement the whole time. Who would be torching villages this far north, they wondered? They had thought themselves particularly successful to get this far from Karkarakamarga³ - surely they wouldn't meet with other Urapi here?

Entering the village unseen when they arrived turned out to be trivial, as it sat astride a creek for which a small hole was allowed at the palisade's base; the kharubbites crawled through it, some earning cuts from sharp rocks along the way. Entry gained, they stalked closer to the village's remaining buildings and heard... laughter?

Peeking around a corner, Shet saw a group milling about, checking corpses for valuables and boasting about feats of bravery. Their tongue was extremely strange, neither that of the mudborn or the Urapi-spoken Varic, yet far from lacking traits of either. Most telling of all though was their height and hair: tall and blonde.

Such was Shet's wonder that he forgot himself, staring at the strangers slack-jawed, forgetting in the moment that he wasn't to let them see him. But they did.

1: The Urapi believe that in order to reach any afterlife, one must earn it. Mudborn believe the wrong things and behave as barbarians besides, so universally reach what is often called the ceaseless dark, the endless void, or other such implications of eternal nothing.

2: Black One - used in the perjorative sense, similar to 'you idiot' or 'you demon.'

3: 'The Mountains of Kar's Path' - The Urapi name for the Sultan mountains, so-called because the Urapi believe Kar's migration west was at their base.