"Yeah," Leir agreed. Skandra had quite obviously gone insane.
He'd seen people lose their minds after battle. Steel shocked. Warriors who simply couldn't handle the stress and the anxiety of a life at war. People he'd trained with and gone to the academy with. When the lines clashed they froze, or they tried to turn, or they went into an animal frenzy. And later they'd be silent. Or they couldn't shut up. Or they were shaking and quivering. Everyone they looked at was covered in blood even when they were just sitting in their bunks.
Leir remembered another Paladin who had been with him for a fight against the drow. They took heavy casualties and afterwards he found the man back in camp. His hands were scrubbed raw. He kept lifting his shirt to check his stomach, as if expecting blood to appear at any moment. He woke up three times that night to scoop imaginary intestines back into an imaginary gutwound.
It wasn't their fault. They had done their duty and gone into battle. Killing did things to some people, it was just nature. It wasn't that they weren't capable of fighting, or that they were lazy or cowardly. They just broke under the stress.
Maybe that had happened to Skandra later rather than sooner.
Leir took the stairs quickly, holding Ithacles's sword blade down. The air grew clammy and he emerged to the lush, hissing patter of a hard rain. He let out a defeated shudder of his throat when he saw the corpses strewn about. It made him hate EIron all the more.
Oddly enough he worried very little for Ithacles. He held the man's sword, even though he wasn't present. Most people would worry, and think that he'd fallen. But for some reason he felt assured that Ithacles was alive, still doing his part. He watched Skandra for a long while in the rain. He almost said something but then he noticed another shape, a woman. She was beautiful and familiar.
He fought to remember her name, and then Aeotha graciously provided it.
"What are you doing here?" he asked her. He walked on as he waited for her reply, keeping his eyes to hers.