This was not, in any way, what Mahasset had been expecting.

He had heard of the shrine at Dimayen, had privately thought that “Overflowing Joys,” was a bit much, though in line with the style of the Korian sects of the Third Dynasty, who had refined hyperbole into its own art form.

He had been meaning to make the journey for some time—not for the presumed joys, overflowing or not, but for a Willani translation of Korian doctrine, to which he had caught an offhand reference in one of the later compilations by Havanius. Only a few fragments of Willani script were known to Mahasset, and the tantalizing possibility of a full text had been tugging at him for weeks now. He had no particular taste for Korian precepts, but they were at least well-attested, and would make a decipherment of Willani all the more robust.

But instead—writhing people in dirty ropes, clumsily bound to cots, a scatter of acolytes doing what little they can to tend to them.

Mahasset stands for a moment, glancing about, then strides directly to the nearest acolyte, speaking in the ancient holy tongue. “What has happened here, my child? Who are these lost folk, and where is your abbot?”

Not far behind him, silent and unnoticed, a sand-cat hunches down in the shadows with a sour, contrary look.