King Aramus Nereus of Mar-el moved next, going to squat beside another lifeless body.

She was a woman in Dellish clothes with light-brown hair. She lay facedown in the snow. One arm was cast above her, her wool skirts covered her legs, her cloak was fanned out beside her as if someone had lifted it to let it catch the air and fall in order to spread it artfully.

Blood soaked the soot-covered snow in a pool all about her.

The next to move was King Mars Laches of Firenze.

His boots crunched through the black and white and a vein beat in his temple as he cast his eyes along the length of the slaughter.

He noted immediately there were body parts missing.

Thus, his gaze followed some red droplets, and in the not far distance, he saw her head and her pelvis.

He closed his eyes.

His captains began to shift about outside the stones, keeping alert, tridents at the ready, as King Jorie of the Mer moved from stone to stone, examining the large impressions in the snow before them. The disturbances of nature’s blanket on the ground.

And the footfalls, or what looked like hoof falls that led away from this place.

One of his males came to him and asked low, “Do you wish us to follow them?”

“No,” he grunted, watching True reach out with a gloved hand to close the eyes of the dead woman on the slab.

He then turned to watch as Aramus gently rolled the woman in the snow to her back, and Jorie drew in a deep breath at the gore that had been made of her, from her face all the way down to her sex.

Cassius straightened from his crouch at the crater, his eyes to the body Aramus had turned, and his words came as a rumble.

“They did not die in vain,” he stated. “Four is worse than one, but five is worse than four.”

True moved to stand by Aramus, looking down at the witch from his realm, his expression an oddly affecting mixture of gentle and enraged.

“These stones imprisoned them,” Aramus noted. “One of them somehow freed himself. The one of lore.” He indicated the broken stone that had no impression in the snow before it. “The others have been here, perhaps since time began.”

Mars also moved close to Aramus and True, indicating a stone with a jerk of his head, stating, “This is the work of the gods.”

Cassius and Jorie joined them, Cassius glancing at a stone embedded in the earth, agreeing, “It has to be.”

“We must come back, with men, follow those tracks, discover where they went,” True said.

“Look upon them,” Aramus said quietly, indicating the woman at their feet and then with a slight lift of his other hand, the one in parts across the circle. “This was done with bare hands. Men who track these creatures must do it with witches. Powerful ones.”