[Scent thing] The smell of something burning, black smoke.
Her back still tingles. The healers tell her it will be some time before the magic fades. She’s ‘lucky’, they say, as though a broken spine were a matter of luck. She had chosen to be on the front line, to fight on the ground with her people. It had not been ‘luck’ that had seen her clipped by the Troll-King’s club. It had been necessity. If it had not been her, then it would have been someone who would not have survived.
Death cannot touch her.
The pyre smoulders yet, still warm from last night’s fury. Blackened flesh and bone peek out from the ashen remains of the timbers. Scraps of too-tough leather, skin, weaponry still show. She sees a skull, still with charred flesh clinging to it, gaping at her, sharpened fangs gleaming. She sneers at it, kicks a little snowy sod towards the embers.
Her back still tingles. Her trigger-finger itches. Sheep bleat from the nearby fields. Watchmen patrol with loaded rifles and their eyes towards the mountain. A biplane swoops past, far overhead, keen yordle eyes to watch for danger from above.
It’s quiet, now. No troll hoots. No warchants from Piltover’s Lokfarian visitors. No chattering yordles reporting in about traps or enemy movement. Just a quiet day up north. A perfect day to bury - or burn - the dead.
She breathes, and opens her eyes. There is no trollflesh pyre by Brigham Point today. It had been two years since the last troll invasion. The beasts have not returned. The level of casualties was high enough to scare them back.
But they’ll return. And by the snapping of her spine, Caitlyn swears that Piltover will be ready for them.