The plan was simple; the execution was a masterpiece of controlled panic.
Kiran, using his new void-folds, became their phantom delivery boy. He would phase to a point near the Ashen Talons/Gilded Claw camp, deposit a small, carefully cracked fragment of the Abyssal core (letting a whisper of its corrosive psychic signature leak out), and vanish before the resulting wail of hungry energy drew guards.
He did this three times, creating a dotted line leading away from their Perch and toward the edge of the Silent Gardens.
"Feel like a postman," Kiran grumbled, appearing back at the Perch after the third drop, shaking void-static from his hair. "A postman delivering cursed mail."
"Any reaction?" Damien asked.
"Oh, they reacted. The second drop was almost on a sentry's boot. He jumped three feet in the air and started yelling about 'demonic worms'. They're mobilizing. A scouting party of five is following the trail. Looks like a mix—two Talon brutes, two Claw trackers, and a weaselly-looking fellow with too many eyes. A seer, probably."
Perfect. The hunters had taken the bait.
The Quartet (and Sylvia) moved to a new, higher vantage point overlooking the approach to the Gardens. They watched as the hunter scouting party, armed and alert, followed the psychic spoor right to the border where sound died.
The lead tracker, a woman with feathers braided into her hair, held up a hand. She pointed to the unnatural silence, then to the grey, sound-sucking plants. She looked nervous. The weaselly seer's many eyes swiveled, trying to pierce the stillness.
Then one of the Talon brutes, impatient, stamped his heavy boot on the ground and yelled, "Come out, you Karyon bastard! We know you're in there!"
His voice was swallowed utterly. The absolute quiet that followed his shout was more unnerving than any echo.
It was also the disturbance the Soul-Artist could not ignore.
From within the grey woods, a figure flowed into view. It was as Sylvia had described: humanoid, grey-skinned, moving with an eerie, boneless grace. Its empty eye sockets seemed to drink the light. It raised a hand, not in attack, but in a gesture of profound… annoyance.
The silent field intensified. The tracker's feathers wilted. The seer clapped his hands over his many eyes with a silent scream. The brutes staggered as if hit by a physical weight.
Then the artist spoke. Not with sound, but directly into their minds. The words were cold, cultured, and dripping with disdain.
You bring your cacophony into my gallery. You shatter the curated silence with your crude mental static. This is… rude.
The hunters, professionals though they were, were unprepared for a psychic assault of this nature. The brutes roared, charging forward with axe and club. They made it three steps before their rage turned to confusion, then to vacant stillness. They stopped, weapons dropping from limp hands, faces going blank. The artist had simply… taken their anger, leaving empty husks.
The tracker and seer turned to flee. The artist's other hand moved. Tendrils of grey mist shot out, not to kill, but to connect. They pierced the fleeing hunters' backs. The tracker convulsed, her life's memories of the hunt—the thrill, the fear, the triumph—visibly streaming out of her in silvery threads, flowing into the artist. The seer's many eyes popped like bubbles, one by one, as his gift of foresight was violently extracted.
In less than a minute, the scouting party was neutralized: two empty shells standing in tranquilized silence, two twitching bodies being drained of experience.
From their vantage, the group watched in horrified fascination.
"That," Kiran breathed, all earlier bravado gone, "is unsettling."
"He didn't kill them," Lyra whispered, her hand over her mouth. "He's… collecting them."
"Efficient," Damien noted, though even his cold analysis was tinged with revulsion. This was not clean conquest. This was desecration. "He is a hoarder, not a warrior. He values the quiet and the memories within it. The hunters were noise. He has… silenced them."
The artist finished his harvest. The tracker and seer collapsed, alive but mind-wiped, empty vessels. The artist looked at their still forms, then at the two placid brutes. With a dismissive wave, the grey mist gathered them all and gently floated them to the edge of the silent zone, depositing them outside like discarded trash. A clear message: Littering will be punished.
Then its empty sockets turned, not toward the hunters' main camp, but up. Directly toward their hiding spot.
And you, the thought-voice slithered into their minds, cold and curious. The quieter watchers. You led the noise to my door. A clever, if impertinent, trick. Do you have anything worth the listening?
They were made. The artist had sensed them the whole time.