The carnage did not reach its end because the screeching of the Mummy Bats had ceased, but because Cassian decreed it so. His voice exploded through the dark of the cavern, just as Hermi finished driving her retrieved longsword through the skull of a final twitching nightmare.
"Well now, that was significantly less than last year, was it not?" Cassian called out, his voice sounding more bored than exhausted. "Have we raided them so thoroughly they have forgotten how to breed? Wrap it up, gentlemen. Who holds the horn? Sound it, if you please."
Commander Otho was the first to find his voice, while the rest of the detachment remained doubled over, their lungs heaving in the wake of the bloodshed.
"Your Majesty!" Otho roared back. "The horn is with me. Permission to conduct a status check before we signal the squires?"
