Twenty-three

YAMAS: The violence surrounding the Forest took a dark turn last night as residents of Yamas sacrificed two of their own people, in what appears to be an effort to placate that hungry power.

Nile Ashforth and Maklesia Sert were hanged shortly before dawn at the western gate of Yamas, barely ten miles from the Forest's edge. Both men had apparently been rousted from their beds by an angry mob of some two dozen townspeople and dragged to the site, where they were stripped, hanged, and mutilated. Police say that the symbols carved into their chests correspond to those used by the Hunter's servants for identification, and that the bodies may have been meant as a kind of offering, intended to propitiate the Hunter and protect the town. If so, it marks the first time that living men'have turned against their own kind in this region, and officials in Yamas consider it a dangerous precedent.

A joint funeral for the two men will be held at the Leonia Funeral Home at six p.m. on Sunday. Offerings in memory of Mers Ashforth and Sert can be made to the gods Keruna and Tlaos at that time, in accordance with their respective traditions.