The Bonehunters/Chapter 22

Epigraph

Who are these strangers, then, with their familiar faces? Emerging from the crowd with those indifferent eyes, and the blood streaming down from their hands. It is what was hidden before, masked by the common and the harmless, now wrenching features revealed in a conflagration of hate and victims tumble underfoot. Who led and who followed and why do flames thrive in darkness and all gaze, insensate and uncomprehending, come the morning light, upon the legacy of unleashed spite? I am not fooled by wails of horror. I am not moved by expostulations of grief. For I remember the lurid night, the visage flashing in firelit puddles of blood was my own. Who was this stranger, then, with that familiar face? Melting into the crowd in the fraught, chaotic heave, and the blood raging in the storm of my skull boils frantic as I plunge down and lay waste all these innocent lives, my hate at their weakness a cauldron overturned, whilst drowning in my own, this stranger, this stranger... On the Dawn I Take My Life The Wickan Pogrom Kayessan