Late in the evening, a patrol led by Talon Knight Leuthold Wager stumbles upon someone in the night. In a flash of fire, smoke, and blood, Wager's patrol is incinerated. Gone are near a score of conscripts, veterans, and Wager himself. Mounted men are sent streaking and screaming like stars through the gloom, their horse's manes and tails in flame even as their eyes run like hot wax down their faces. These unfortunates no longer have vocal chords to speak their last moments, and so the remaining soldiery can only guess at what's occurred. Come morning's light, all bodies are accounted for, if impossible to distinguish in the mass of charred flesh... with one additional corpse at their epicenter. His missing flesh leaves his blackened teeth in a rictus smile.