I emerged from the stairs to find the chaos I had expected.
In the cramped anteroom, it looked like a cyclone had swept through. An upturned chair lay awkwardly by the door, a broken table had splintered into jagged fragments, and a shattered flower vase bled water and petals across the floor.
Two dead Pulajan cultists completed the grisly picture. One had collapsed near the landing, his body sprawled sideways with a grotesque expression of horror frozen on his blood-spattered face—likely the first to fall.
The other had made it farther, a few feet from the wall, machete inches from his hand. He had gone down fighting. His torso was riddled with gashes and punctures—no doubt from Medina's bayonet-wielding vanguard.
