Had Marventas been cleaned up and in a less desolate scene he may have looked as grand as all mages seemed to think they were. However, his robes were tattered and burnt and his cloak was more of a scrap of fabric fastened around his shoulders. His normally blond hair was now half scorched and standing on end. His normally pale skin was now darker than Torvola’s thanks to the layer of soot that covered it.
He hurried over to Torvola and offered a hand, “I must apologize, m’lady.”
“Was this your doing?” Torvola asked as he helped her up.
“In my defense,” he said, “My intention was to zap one of these foul beasts – not start a forest fire.”
“Well at least you didn’t do too much damage to the wood,” Torvola said and looked around her. The underbrush had been completely cleared out and a few of the drier branches and leaves were still smoldering. A few yards away laid the charred remains of the creature that had almost killed her.
Elders were incredibly hard to kill but apparently an explosion did the trick quite nicely.
Unfortunately she wasn’t entirely convinced on the viability of that tactic if she wanted to live to the next battle. If there were more of these monsters out there, Torvola had a feeling she was going to be fighting many more battles. She suppressed a tired sigh.
“What are you doing here?” she asked the mage.
“Looking for survivors of course. We were attacked by those accursed things at daybreak. We put up a fierce resistance but we were thoroughly routed. Those monsters are hard to kill.”
“Yes,” Torvola said, “Yes they are. Is Lord Lanim alright?”
Marventas nodded, “He and I ran off with a few of his guard. We managed to make a stand at Shepherd’s Hill. When we finally fought them off, those of us who survived went off in search of the others. That’s when we were attacked by who I’m assuming is the group that attacked you.”
They began to walk through the wood, Torvola listened to Marventas talk but she only heard snippets of what he was saying. Her eyes darted around constantly, looking for any threats. Had they seen the last of the Elders? Had they been chased off by the light of day? The forest had become bright enough for them to navigate without much trouble. Though the sun had risen, the birds stayed silent and Torvola knew why: Their corpses littered the forest floor like fallen leaves, victims of stinkdamp or the subsequent fireball. Marventas kept talking, either oblivious to the death around them or trying very hard not to pay attention to it.
“Lightning spells worked well on those creatures so I figured I would use it again,” he was saying, “I didn’t realize the gas that caused that accursed smell was so flammable.”
“Stinkdamp.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s called stinkdamp, it collects in mine tunnels and is explosive to the smallest spark,” Torvola said, “I’ve smelled similar gases in the swamps but never in the same concentrations as they were in the mines.”
Marventas made a troubled noise in the back of his throat, “What could it mean?”
“I don’t know yet,” Torvola said and the two stopped short as they reached a creek.
A creek full of charred corpses.
Some bore wounds obviously made by a blade but most did not. Torvola knelt down to inspect one such corpse and grimaced at its horrific state. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, only that it died with its mouth open as if mid scream. Did Marventas cause this?
‘He didn’t know the gas was flammable.’
She looked around the draw they found themselves in – the gas would have collected here to a lethal degree. If the fire hadn’t killed them, the poisonous effects of the gas most certainly would have.
Marventas looked distraught and queasy, he had one hand clamped over his mouth and nose and the other clutched at his stomach. Tears streaked down his soot covered cheeks and he choked back a hysterical sob as the horrific realization dawned on him.
“Thoran forgive me,” he finally managed to choke out, “What have I done?”
Torvola stood up slowly, “If they were caught in this fire, they were dead long before it happened,” she said quietly. Though even she wasn’t convinced that his actions didn’t result in their deaths … but she needed to keep Marventas from completely breaking down. She still needed him to help her. Marventas shook his head and finally turned away to vomit.
She scanned over the bodies, trying hard to not look at any one for too long. A larger figure lay atop two smaller figures, as if trying to protect them. Clutched in its blackened hand was a charred log.
Torvola returned to a frame of mind she hoped she never would experience again. The world became a distant blur to her as she went through the motions of maneuvering the corpses in the draw into neat rows. She tried to ignore how the charred clothes crumbled away and the skin sloughed off in her hands. Marventas sat heavily on the ground and stared straight ahead and Torvola realized he’d be of no help in his state.
Lord Lanim and the few surviving villagers had found them a short while later. The lord’s elegant robes were tattered and bloodied. While he sported a few cuts on his face and arms, he had no wounds that would account for the amount of blood that had soaked into the fabric. He approached Torvola, “I’m glad to see you survived m’lady.”
“You as well, m’lord,” Torvola said, “We’ve taken heavy losses.”
“I know,” Lanim said. He looked around at the charred bodies that Torvola had already lined up, “… That damage, was it from the explosion?”
“Yes.”
Torvola saw the lord’s mouth set into a thin line, an unreadable expression crossed his features and he took a deep breath. His gaze flickered to Marventas, “Did he…?”
She knew what he wanted to know even if he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Was Marventas responsible for the deaths? She couldn’t say. She had no way of knowing if they were alive or dead before the explosion happened. She desperately hoped they had already succumbed to the gas or the blades of the monsters that attacked them. Burning to death was a very unpleasant way to die.
“They may have already been gone,” Torvola finally said, “But I don’t think any one will know for sure.”
Lanim nodded slowly and looked like he was about to say something before he shook his head. Instead he knelt down next to one of the corpses Torvola hadn’t moved yet, hesitating but for a moment before putting his hands under the body’s armpits and heaving it up. Torvola grabbed the body’s legs and together they carried it to the row. Torvola didn’t even dare look at the face of the body she held or even speculate on who it could have been. There would be time for grief later. Right now she was needed to help the living.
Minutes later they had finished their task: The bodies in the draw were lined up neatly in a row on the mossy earth. Torvola knew they needed to leave, to search for other survivors, to start the process of recovering from the disaster that had befallen them. Still, it felt wrong to leave the dead where they were, it felt as if they were abandoning them to the wood.
“Where would we take them?” Torvola asked. Her voice sounded flat, emotionless – even to her.
Lanim ran a hand through his long, dark hair. His eyes looked as vacant as she felt, “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to leave them here.”
“We may have to,” Torvola said.
They left their dead where they lay, piling rocks over their corpses in an attempt to keep the scavengers from getting to them. They’d have to retrieve them later. Torvola and the others resumed their search for survivors but aside from finding a terrified and barely coherent Petan – they found no one else. Most of the corpses they found were either charred or run through. Some of the dead though were discolored, mouths agape as if they had died mid-gasp, and their bloodshot eyes stared vacantly up at the sky. Marventas grew quieter and quieter as the day progressed and Torvola couldn’t blame him.
She knew there wasn’t much she could say to make him feel any better about the situation they found themselves in.
They ascended the hill to where Torvola had camped with the survivors the night before. At the summit lay the dead body of the guard, a few villagers who didn’t make it out in time, and Saxus. Torvola pointedly looked away from the scene and towards the sea and she finally felt something for the first time in hours. A low, smoldering ember of rage deep in the pit of her stomach. She clenched her fists and set her jaw.
She didn’t know why the Elders had emerged from their dark, dreary holes to attack her and her village but she wasn’t going to let that transgression slide. She recognized the landscape around her, knew where her house sat high above the sea and the waves. She picked up her cloak that still lay on the ground by the fire where she had left it for the baker and his wife. She wrapped Saxus’s body in the cloak, working quickly to avoid looking at him for too long. She knew if she looked at him, looked at the wounds that marred his body, she’d never recover. She picked him up and cradled him in both arms like a mother carrying her baby.
Without a word to anyone she marched along the ridge and towards her home.
No one dared stop her.
There was some obvious damage to the walls of her cabin and the roof had collapsed in some spots. The door had popped out of its warped frame but the walls, by some miracle, were technically still standing. She stepped into the room and set Saxus gently down on the floor by the cold hearth.
Torvola’s world finally grew quiet and calm after the chaos she had been through. The silence weighed heavy on her tired mind and she leaned heavily against the wall – ignoring the pain in her burnt back. She slid down to the floor and drew her knees to her chest, staring off at nothing. She half expected Saxus to come to her side, whining and licking to comfort her. She looked up and scanned the room for him before her eyes settled on the form swaddled in her cloak.
Of course.
Tears ran down her cheek and a sob tore through her chest. The feeling of emptiness, of loss, finally took hold. She buried her face in her knees and cried.