[ WP ] `` Witch hunts are rarely ever about witches . ''

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 Though she had yet to see even ninety years, barely out of childhood, Faith Alathir considered herself a connoisseur on the various types of vermin and monsters the Fae nobility could produce. Long lives and rich tastes had a tendency to breed decadence and vice, where every whim or desire could be obtained or sampled... for a price. Food and drinks, sport and sex, all were readily available to those with the means. She had met with several nobles who'd put a serpent to shame in terms of venom and malice, but few matched the figure standing on the stage before her. 
 
 Fate had aptly named General Wrennlin Marr. 
 
 According to the stories, General Marr was once a noted beau among the Salamanders, admired by the court's women for his fair features and golden mane of hair. They said that he was both a poet and a warrior, his twin loves of art and war combined into one deadly, memorizing display. But that had been before the Arrival Wars, before he suffered his very first defeat. 
 
 Whilst rallying his soldiers for another attack against entrenched Human positions, a flight of *Scathalith* bombers dropped napalm on him and his handpicked commanders. Only the timely intervention of a Salamander healer saved his life, but at the cost of his army, his brothers in arms, and his sanity. 
 
 Languishing in the agonizing realm between life and death, his mind began to turn against his king and all those who'd ordered him to conquer in their name. After months of laborious healing and retraining, the doctors and physicians pronounced him at full health. Gone was his beautiful features, replaced by a mask of puckered scars. His lips and nose had been burned away, leaving a sunken pit and grinning teeth bared in permanent rictus. Within hours of being reinstated to his position he launched a coup against the royal house, executing the king and all his family in the same fiery fate that General Marr had been forced to suffer. Any who opposed him he burnt as enemies of the state. 
 
 The pyres had already reached their roaring crescendo, the blackened husks still chained to their pillars. The crowd of Salamanders and lesser `` subjects'' cheered and bayed with blood lust. More traitors, Marr had said. The weak chaff separated from the fruitful, productive masses. Now, ash in the wind. 
 
 Faith felt a hand reach up and squeeze her shoulder comfortingly. Calluses ringed the area from thumb to forefinger, a swordsman's callus they called it. Hidden by the black scarf drawn over his face, his features were limited to the gray-green eyes staring out towards the pyres and General Marr. 
 
 `` Disgust is good. Means you have taste. Myself though, I prefer hate. Hate will keep you warm on a cold winter's night when you have nothing else to burn.''
