Chapter 49

However, one masterpiece in the wall made Damian gape, a throng of humans who wore odd clothing used lanterns to light a bundle of lumber under a witch attached to a stake. In another, a chaplain looped a hangman's rope around the neck of a young girl. In the third mural, an executioner whirled an ax at a dark woman slumped on the chopping block of wood; in the fourth, a woman with a stone around her neck plummeted beneath the tides while the white men onshore focused on her.

It took Damian a second to figure it out. These were echoes of the killings described in human book history. The mass manslaughter that swept across Europe in the 17th century. The slaying of witches and other rumored supernatural beings The impressions were so startling that Damian just stood there, mouths agape, while the patrols trudged ahead.