Sonder dropped to the ground for a moment in exhaustion, her hands still on the fragment of the shard.
It pulsed once more, weakly, like a dying heartbeat, and then fell silent.
Now it seemed like nothing more than a bit of dark glass.
She exhaled.
Carefully, she gathered herself and then stood. Falling into evil seemed to be such an easy thing, and she was saddened by anyone's fall into it, but it seemed that the bloodhound's brother hadn't known what he was doing.
He was a puppet of the evil power that lurked in the shard, and when just one could twist a person into such a fiend, she feared what she might become or what she would do in the future.
But that was a worry for another time.
She still had the staff.
The wood was scorched, but it seemed to have hardened under the influence of the shard.
It still hummed faintly, as though it remembered the power it had once held.
The beastfolk were waiting for her.
They stood in a loose circle, bloodied, bruised and silent. The wolf-man and the fox helped the hyena to his feet.
No one spoke.
The bloodhound woman stood apart from them, still by the spot where her brother had died.
Her shoulders sagged, her hands open at her sides, claws half-curled.
Her gaze stayed fixed on the place where his ashes had fallen, as though she could still see him.
Sonder approached slowly.
When she reached her, she didn't speak at first.
She only knelt beside her and held out the staff.
The bloodhound's eyes flicked down to it.
"I don't want it."
Sonder hesitated. She didn't know what to do. Uncertain, she said, "It was his."
She thought it may have been a consolidation of her brother's memory.
"Yes. But now it's just a stick that remembers evil things." She turned away, ears folding back. "I don't want it."
The others said nothing. They watched, still uneasy.
"I want every trace of what he became gone," she said. "Shard and staff. Both. They took him. Even this cave." Her eyes lifted to Sonder's, wet but steady. "None of us know about magecraft, and we have neither the knowledge nor the capability to deal with such matters. But you're a mage. You know what to do with such things, whether to keep them or destroy them. I trust you more than I trust any of us."
Sonder looked at the staff in her hands. It seemed heavier now.
"I don't know if I can keep it safe forever," Sonder said softly.
"Then keep it safe for now," the bloodhound answered. "That's more than any of us can do."
The beastfolk lowered their heads. The cave had become a tomb, not for a monster, but for a victim of something greater than he'd been able to master.
Sonder put the shard into the satchel with the other one and gripped the staff firmly.
"I'll see to it," she said.
The bloodhound nodded, once. She didn't thank Sonder.
There was nothing to be thankful for.