Illando had to admit, he was surprised.

The three otterkin in front of them certainly weren't members of the cult – he could see it at a glance – but he couldn't think of any other reason why they would be here. The males looked almost identical, twins he guessed. The female was taller and brawny with it, and all three of them looked thoroughly shocked.

He glanced at Farler. The other enforcer gave him a baffled shrug. Illando turned back, craning his head to look past the trio to the cult gathering below. With the information extracted from Bronco's captive, he'd raced out to Helsfur with Farler, Gensher, Ferrow, and despite his protests, Noelle, who had officially declared herself fit for duty once more. The enforcers had quickly located the salt packing house and, with a combination of deft climbing and brute force, found a back window on the second level to slip inside.

And somehow these three otterkin, coming from somewhere, had ended up at the exact same vantage point to spy on the followers of Kendris. The odds against such a thing were fantastically slim, and all he could think was: why?

"Who are you?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

"I..." the female's jaw flapped for a moment, her whole body rigid with fright. That reaction only reinforced his assumption that these three had nothing to do with the cult. The last cultists he'd encountered had tried to kill him on sight.

He lowered his armbow and sank into a crouch, gesturing for the others to do the same. They dispersed along the gantry like deadly shadows as he edged closer to the otterkin, raising a paw in what he hoped was a non-threatening way.

"We're not going to hurt you," he said.

"You're enforcers," one of the males blurted.

"Yes, we are, but we're not here for you. We're here for them." Illando nodded to the lurid glare of the gathering beyond. The chanting shielded their low whispers from prying ears. "Now, who are you, and why are you here?"

"My name's Kappsi," the female told him, finding her voice again. She swallowed hard and glanced nervously over her shoulder before continuing. "These are my brothers, Haarm and Skoppa. The boss guy down here? We followed him here, from the Whaveloda docks."

Whaveloda. He knew the name. It plucked at something in the back of his mind, but the reason eluded him.

"And why," he continued. "Did you do that?"

"We're missin' someone," the other twin piped up, speaking in a harsh whisper. "Those crazies down there snatched her right off the docks."

Kappsi nodded. "Those freaks took my friend. I'm just trying to find her. That's why we're here."

Illando realised abruptly why the district name had struck a chord. His mind flashed back to the enforcer compound when he'd first tried to piece together this ungodly mess; to the abduction case where those that reported it suddenly took off before any investigation could be opened. This was either a coincidence of truly epic proportions, or he was staring at the kin who'd filed the report.

He was bursting with questions. Three dock workers had managed to trace the cult as effectively as the enforcers with all their resources; he couldn't decide if he should be impressed or embarrassed.

"But, err ... what are you doing here?" Kappsi asked shakily.

"Your buddies down there are causin' more problems than you know," Noelle murmured from further along the gantry. The wound in her side had healed well, but her flank bulged from an extra wrapping of armour. "What do you wanna do with these three, boss?"

"They shouldn't be here," Farler growled. "They could compromise us."

"We ain't done anything," Skoppa hissed, the burly otterkin tensing as he glowered at Farler. "You ain't gone no grounds to get rid of us. We got as much right to tail these creeps as anybody."

"I think, for the moment, we're all on the same side," Illando said. He prowled silently forward, past Kappsi and the twins until he reached the gantry rail. Through gaps in the mesh he examined the blaze of the room.

Two rows of burning braziers formed a corridor down the middle of the cavernous room, filling the pack house with a clove-scented haze. At head of the room a simple platform of dark wood had been erected, standing maybe a meter tall with steps leading up onto it from one side. The walls and floor had been painted liberally with the Savage Fire iconography – smeared in a gore red that suspected wasn't paint. On either side of braziers more and more kin were packing into the chamber, all of them chanting a single word.

Kendris.

Illando frowned. A full account of what led the otterkin here could wait, but there was one question he wanted an answer to right now.

"The 'boss guy' you mentioned – who is he?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

"Err..." the otterkin looked at each other before Kappsi continued. "You don't know?"

"This cult follow the teachings of someone called Kendris but we haven't found the leader."

"Oh." She pivoted around, moving up alongside him. He could feel the fear still rolling off of her, but her curiosity about the gathering below won out. "The thing we tracked here, accordin' to the clerics it's called Crimson Teeth."

"The 'thing'?"

"Some bloody walkin' talkin' myth," Haarm grunted. "One of the clerics told us. We had a close encounter – it's a lot more real than I like – tell ya that for free."

"I think... I think Crimson Teeth might be this Kendris person," Kappsi said. "They started that chanting when it arrived."

Illando shook his head. "Kendris died hundreds of years ago."

"I'm just tellin' you what we saw, alright?"

"Illando," Noelle hissed urgently, dropping lower behind the railings and looking across at them. "I think our show is about to start."

"Alright, everybody muzzle it." Illando pointed at the Kappsi and her brothers. "You three, stay right where you are. Gensher, keep an eye them."

"Boss." The other enforcer slunk around to position himself between the otterkin and the stairwell down to the lower level.

Illando turned his full attention back down on the cultists, their chants rising in volume to fill the packing house with a thunderous cacophony. More kin streamed in from side entrances – there were easily two-hundred people now crammed into the room, the scent of their musks blending with the scorch of the braziers into an unpleasant cocktail. Despite the storm that had been raging, it was growing hot and humid inside the building and he found himself panting lightly to regulate his temperature.

Then a large set of double doors opened, directly in line with the corridor of braziers. The chanting dissolved into a wordless, deafening roar as the leader of the Savage Fire cult stepped into the light.

A lean-limbed wolfkin male wielding a claw-headed axe bared his teeth as he stalked along on the newcomer's left side. To the right, a female felkin prowled, shamelessly showing off her willowy frame with a short, wispy kilt and a sleeveless, high-collared bodywrap that cut off beneath her ribs. A plume of long headfur blazed a cobalt trail down the side of her neck and across her chest. The blades of three small throwing claws glinted in one of her paws.

Between them strode the person calling themselves Kendris. Illando's eyes narrowed with interest as he examined the creature – they looked like a male at a glance. A sense of impossible wonder and apprehension grew in his gut, however, as he tried to classify the figure any further.

Neither wolfkin nor vulkin, Kendris was tall and gangly, with a head that seemed to hunch slightly forward. A barbaric blaze of dark brown headfur curled and cascaded down his back and around his bloodthirsty face. Illando's mind flickered back to Bonequill, and what was supposed to have happened to Kendris and his kind.

Hynakin. A breed long extinct.

Could this be one of them? Illando had seen pictures in the archive that certainly matched what he was looking at. He stopped short of the possibility of this being the Kendris – no beast of the world could have lived through the intervening chasm of time – but perhaps the hynakin species had not been as thoroughly eradicated as the archivists thought.

A lost ancestor perhaps? Perhaps some small number of hynakin had escaped those bloody days intact, waiting in the shadows for their chance to finally strike back against the teachings of the Great Peace that they so loathed.

Kendris' gaze swept from left to right, his rangy stride carrying him quickly up the path between the braziers and to the steps of the stage. He took up position on the platform, a grotesque, malicious grin crawling across his face to reveal two rows of crimson-painted teeth. The feral cheering swelled for a few more seconds before the hynakin raised a fist.

An instant hush descended with the suddenness of a falling curtain. Illando became very aware of his breathing. Flames licked hungrily at the damp air and water sloshed in the lower levels. When Kendris spoke his voice thundered out across the cavern of the pack house.

"The Fire will cleanse!" the hynakin roared, the words rattling at the back of his throat before exploding out over his congregation. He raised both fists high, showing the muscle and sinew in his arms as the cultists repeated the phrase, yelling it back at him. His grin somehow grew even wider, the red of his teeth shimmering in firelight.

"I feel the burn in my heart," Kendris continued, lowering one fist to thump against his chest. "Seeing you all here, more than ever before. It shows this city is not beyond saving. It shows that the Fire still burns strong among you."

Silence fell on the followers of the Savage Fire, their eyes fixed on the hynakin. His strange, guttering voice, carried an accent that Illando couldn't place, somehow sounding like a rasp, but immensely powerful at the same time. The consonants were viciously sharp, like knives cutting into his ears.

"For some time now I have walked the tunnels and swam the docks of this place. I see greatness, but greatness constrained. I see power, but power leashed. I see order imposed on a world that neither needs nor wants it!"

A chorus of agreeing grunts rippled through the gathering.

"Crazy mongrel," Noelle muttered under her breath.

Illando allowed himself a faint smile as he fixed his gaze on Kendris. This clearly was not the first time the hynakin had preached to his followers. The phrases were expertly crafted, designed to drag rage from the guts of Wildhearth's lower rungs of life. Bronco's words echoed in his mind.

You'd be surprised what can seem like a good idea when you've got nothing left to lose.

"I know among you there has been hesitation," Kendris continued, striking a suddenly more amicable tone. "I know there is doubt. I would not want you here if you did not question what I am offering. No matter what the lies of the clerics would tell you, we are not savages. We are simply pure. We understand what we really are.

"Your city is infected with the rot of pointless ambition. Your 'leaders' scrabble like rats – one more expensive bottle of lasher here, a dress of the greatest gold there. They lavish themselves while you break your backs in the dust and the dark."

Anger swelled in the room. Illando could feel it's electric heat, and even he couldn't deny the twinge of awe that twanged in the back of his mind. Somewhere amid the spitting rhetoric there was something he could understand about the hynakin's words. Wildhearth's bureaucracy could sometimes be so ponderous as to be suffocating – infuriating, even.

"Their new world has left you behind!" Kendris thundered, baring his teeth fully. "And they will see you ground into the dirt in their tracks, because they think you have lost what makes you alive. They think you have lost the Fire, that you would never dream of killing for what is yours. In a wiser age, these cowards would have been strung from the gates for the vultures!"

A vast swell of roaring erupted from the crowd, loud enough to make Illando wince. The masses pressed in along the corridor of braziers, raising weapon and chanting Kendris's name afresh. The whole thing was like an insane fever dream.

"Oh, by the Peace..."

The choking gasp wrenched Illando's attention from the screaming kin and he glanced at Kappsi. The otterkin's eyes were wide, her paws gripping the gantry rail so tightly it looked like she might snap the metal clean in two. She wasn't looking at Kendris, though. Her eyes were fixed on a point near the back of the crowd.

"What is it?" he whispered, leaning closer. "What do you see?"

She shook her head. Her paws unlatched from the rail and she turned around, sinking down into a sitting position. Shock numbed her features.

"Kappsi?" Haarm scuttled forward, dropping into a crouch by her side. "Sis, what is it? Y' see somethin' down there?"
Kappsi gulped down a lump in her throat. "Brickle," she said, her voice shaking violently. "I saw Brickle."

Now it was Haarm's turn to look shocked.

"That's your friend?" Illando asked.

"Aye." Haarm nodded. He took a hold of Kappsi paw, leaning in closer. "She's down there?"

"She's there. I'm sure of it."

"I... ain't that a good thing?"

From the look on Kappsi's face, Illando knew that whatever reunion the otterkin had been hoping for, she was heading for disappointment. He edged closer to her, trying to keep one eye on the cultists.

"What exactly did you see?" he asked.

"Brickle's down there but..." Bafflement etched itself across the otterkin's face. "We thought they were going to kill her, but she's down there in that crowd. She's one of them!"

Illando recoiled slightly in surprise. He glanced back at the others. Farler pulled a disgusted face, while further back Gensher's lips pulled back in a silent snarl.

"Whadda ya mean, 'she's one of them'?" Skoppa blurted

"I don't understand. They took her. They attacked us."

"You're sure it's her?" Illando cut in to head off further disbelief. "Absolutely sure?"

She shot him a black look. "I know my friends, wolfkin."

"Show me," he told her, ignoring the jibe. He was too curious now to care about her attitude towards him. Taking a grip on Kappsi's arm, he turned her back to face the gathering. She bristled at his touch but didn't resist, twisting around and rising to peek over the edge of the railing. Haarm rose up alongside her, eyes wide and unbelieving.

"At the back of that crowd on the right, near one of the exits," she murmured. "Short headfur, black and curly. She's got a barge-herder bodywrap under one of those bloody robes."

Illando craned his neck, following her pointing claw. Picking out individual features from this distance was a challenge, but there weren't too many otterkin down there. His sharp, hunter's eyes soon spotted Kappsi's friend.

Female, a little shorter than his new acquaintance but still well-built, she waved some kind of home-made hatchet in one paw, the other thumping against her breast. Her mouth opened in a full throated scream, revealing red-painted canines. The tangle of her headfur looked unkempt, and her cult robe was ripped in several places to reveal her dark brown coat beneath.

Assuming Kappsi was right, there was only one conclusion.

"By the boilin' tides," Haarm breathed, slack-jawed in shock. "She ain't kiddin', Skoppa. That's Brickle down there, no mistake."

"What in the Fire's goin' on?!"

"They're not just taking people and killing them," Illando muttered. "They're converting them. Brainwashing them."

"Ah, Peace'n'pissing Fire," Noelle groaned, easing back from the rails. "That's just what we need."

"How?!" Kappsi dug her paws into her headfur frantically. "Brickle's not some down-on-her-luck ganger from the underdocks. We had a good life!"

"Pain can undo a lot," he replied grimly. "Believe me, I've done it."

She jerked back from him, a horrified expression on her face, but he ignored it. She and her brothers had jammed their tails squarely into a world that required a lot more brutality than they could comprehend.

"Illando," Farler interjected. "What do you want to do?"

"Bastard tried to kill you," Ferrow spat. "I say we return the favour."

By every line of every cleric's book, Illando wanted to. He looked down on the screaming kin, on the madness that pulsated down there, and wanted nothing more than to tear the head off the snake. Kendris filled him with a strange, horrible sense of kinship that made his skin crawl. He wanted to stamp out that feeling as quickly as possible.

But right now, the five of them and three civilian dockworkers against easily three hundred bloodthirsty cultists were nod odds he wanted to risk.

"There's too many for us to go in claws out," he said reluctantly. "Let's get out of here. We'll get a patrol on this place and regroup. At least now we know who we're dealing with."

Gensher inclined his head to the three otterkin. "What about them?"

Illando looked at them for a moment, feelings of sheer curiosity bubbling up inside him. He felt like he'd barely scratched the surface of their tale – they still had an awful lot of questions that needed to be answered. That, and he allowed a small part of himself to believe that they may have found some unlikely allies in the fight against the Savage Fire's followers.

"They're coming with us," he said, looking thoughtfully at Kappsi. "I think we've got a lot to talk about."