A high, keening wail ripped through the pre-dawn stillness, followed by the guttural roar of men and the sickening crunch of timber. Ilsa bolted upright on her cot, the roughspun blanket tangling around her legs. Her ribs ached from sleeplessness, her mind still circling the maps of tainted aquifers she had matched with industrial sites hours earlier. Pine smoke and burning tallow hit her nostrils before she reached the clinic threshold. Red, hungry light painted the underside of the heavy canvas roof. Outside, the world was pandemonium. Supply tents, stacked high with dried rations and bundled furs, blazed like monstrous torches. Figures, dark and agile, darted between the flames, some swinging crude axes, others brandishing torches of their own. A chilling chorus of howls rose from the far end of the compound – the Vex-maddened patients, their confinement threatened. “To arms!” Grisha’s voice, a gravelly thunderclap, cut through the din. He stood at the threshold of The Bastion, his single eye glinting in the flickering light, a heavy war-axe already in his hand. Behind him, the ambulatory convalescents scrambled for whatever lay near: stout walking sticks, lengths of tent pole, and iron scalpels. “They’re trying to release the blighted ones!” one of the orderlies shrieked, pointing towards the isolated enclosures. “They want to spread the Vex through the camp!” Ilsa’s mind raced, discarding fear for cold calculation. This wasn’t a random skirmish. This was deliberate, orchestrated. Stellan’s patrons. They had to be stopped, but bloodshed was not her way, not here, not in the sanctuary she had fought to build. “Grisha, barricade the main entrance!” she ordered, keeping her pitch low and even. “Bring anything heavy! The cots, the supply chests! The sick must be protected!” He hesitated for a fraction, then nodded, roaring orders. Men began to drag heavy timber and stacked barrels, forming a makeshift wall across the main entrance. Splintering ashwood and hostile shouts echoed as the raiders pressed their attack, lunging toward the infirmary. “Inside!” Ilsa urged, pulling a young, feverish soldier, still weak but clutching a stone pestle, back through the door. “Everyone inside! We won’t let them in.” The reinforced door groaned under an iron blade. Inside, ash drifted down from the roof ties. The men under treatment shrank back against the dry pallets, staring at the shaking wood. Ilsa moved with purpose, her gaze sweeping over the meager supplies. Her medical kit, the boiling cauldron, the various powdered herbs and salts she had accumulated. Her mind pieced together a different kind of weapon. “Grisha, the salt barrels! And the dried Nightshade leaves from the drying rack! Quickly!” He glanced at her, then toward the convalescents, then back to the shuddering planks. “What in the Hells are you planning, healer?” “Containment,” Ilsa stated, her voice tight. “Not slaughter. Get me those items, and a few of those heavy clay pots!” While Grisha and two limping veterans dragged the casks forward, the planking split. A dark, masked face peered through the gap, followed by the glint of an axe blade. A former scout named Joran, barely two days free of delirium, braced himself and shouted, “Behind me!” He raised a makeshift shield of packed oxhide and woven willow. “No direct confrontation!” Ilsa snapped, her voice sharp. “We hold the line, but we don’t engage in close quarters. Joran, keep them at bay, but do not attack!” She worked with furious speed. Into three large clay pots, she poured generous handfuls of crushed rock salt, then added handfuls of the dried Nightshade leaves – a common, mildly toxic plant used in poultices but known for its irritating properties when burned. Next, she added some powdered sulfur, scavenged from the tanner’s supplies, and a few handfuls of damp sawdust for slow-burning fuel. She stirred the concoction with a long stick. “Grisha, when I tell you, we’ll toss these through the breach. Have flaming brands ready.” The assailants outside grew frantic. A burly man in a stiff wolf pelt snarled through the breach, “Burn them out! Smoke the witch into the yard!” “Now!” Ilsa called out. Grisha, without hesitation, plunged a torch into one of the pots. A noxious, greenish smoke immediately began to billow. He, along with Joran and another soldier, hurled the pots through the splintered door and through gaps in the barricade. The clay shattered against the frozen mud, releasing thick plumes of yellow-green fumes. Strangled gasps rose from the attackers. Men stumbled back, their shouts turning to choked gasps. The sulfur fumes bit deep into raw lungs, forcing men to fling aside their axes to claw at streaming eyes. It wasn’t lethal, but it was profoundly disorienting and incapacitating. Within moments, the coordinated attack dissolved into a chaotic retreat, their coughing fits echoing through the burning camp. Ilsa didn’t waste a second. “Grisha, the fires! We need to stop the spread!” They emerged into the smoke-choked air, battling the spreading inferno with buckets of water and damp cloths, Grisha's convalescent men hauling buckets alongside her with soot-blackened hands. The raiders who had not scattered into the pines lay retching in the dirt, clutching their throats. Ilsa knelt beside one, his wolf’s mask askew, revealing a young, terrified face. He was coughing blood, not from a wound, but from the searing irritation of the smoke. She uncorked a small vial of water, offering it to him. “Drink. It will help.” His eyes, red-rimmed and streaming, stared at her with a mixture of terror and confusion. He tried to recoil, but his body was too weak. He drank, sputtering, then slumped back against the earth. Hoofbeats pounded through the churned mud before she could finish checking his pulse. A detachment of armored riders, their polished breastplates gleaming even in the dim light of the dying fires, swept into the ravaged camp. At their head rode Kazimir Voronin, his face a mask of cold fury. He surveyed the charred supply wagons, the gagging prisoners, and the scorched timbers of the clinic. He dismounted, his movements sharp and precise, his eyes like chips of obsidian as they landed on Ilsa. She met his stare, a streak of soot across her cheek, her hands stained with the dust of Nightshade and sulfur. She was not cowering. She was not terrified. She was calmly, methodically, stitching a slash across the wolf-masked captive's forearm with steady bone forceps. His rage, previously simmering, now threatened to boil over. He stalked towards her, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that cut through the silence of the aftermath. “What in the name of the Ancestors… has transpired here?”

First, Do No Harm