The tail-bound fiend snickered a moment while the nub-horn glared at Piro with a hatred easily noticeable in its eyes, but the fiend said nothing in reply to him. Though when Naori posed her own question, the fiend spat to the side. "We grind beasts to meat, also good for grinding soul sometimes. Wasteful, shreds soul badly but not so much Illiaster. Not common, but punishment and variety. Boss-Lady loves torturing man who sold his wife and kid to slavery to cover his gambling death. Thinks its fitting to put that man into meat grinder occasionally." This much being said, the guards stayed at the edge of the wards, leaving the four of them to cross them at their own pace.<br/><br/>As Naori moved ahead there, a yellow barrier-field flashed twenty feet high and twenty feet wide around her as she touched its surface, slipping through. The field was like pushing through a thin layer of water to her, but the fiends seemed to shiver watching the barrier's surface shifting like fluid water to cover the hole she made to it in passing, the whole field vanishing as soon as the hole made by her passing was fixed less than two seconds later.<br/><br/>The same sensation awaited the rest of them as they crossed through, but none of them were immediately attacked by the sensation, yet the spear that Jia was carrying sizzled at the tip, the blackened head of it seeming to turn red hot for a moment before cooling, a tiny bit of blood on its surface seeming to be cooked into vapor in a mere moment. Similarily, a hint of blood on Piro's chestplate showed itself to be vaporizing with a hiss after the passing of the barrier, vanishing off like it was never there to begin with.<br/><br/>They had a bit of walking to do still, but once within the barrier field they could see the road splitting ahead, and beyond a bit of a hill further off, the top floor of a structure was visible. Black stone besides white bones worked into a spiked decoration, the ramparts of the structure were foreboding enough even without the tacky addition of skeletons hung from chains along the outer wall, their bones joined together by a mess of hooks struck into the bones, even from the distance looking like they had been left in place just to hold the skeletons together in somewhat recognisable shapes. Human, elven, halfling, dwarven, the sizes were varied but those skulls were hornless.<br/><br/>Yet on the bone spikes rested blackened figures with slim tails and nub horns. Lesser beings similar to their own guards, impaled on bone teeth the length of long-spears, some of them seeming to be still alive, based on the pained groans carried along by the wind blowing on the ashen soil. There was no immediate signs of guards there, and the front gates of the place were actually open, but the box-like walls surrounding the place only showing the main structure's roof didn't give much of an idea what to expect beyond the entry way. What was apparent on a sight though was a green smoke rising from behind the wall, mixing with the clouds above, along with a few small craters in the ground around the place.