The Officer and the Princess: The Flames Of War

Chapter 19

Once Sung had gathered up his equipment they reluctantly continued forward. He, Ty Lee, and Azula had spread out slightly at Sung's recommendation, a way that if they were attacked hopefully they all wouldn't get knocked out in the first volley. The further they went the stronger the smell became. It was awful, a terrible stomach churning smell that no sane person should ever experience. But they weren't dealing with sane creatures out in this Jungle.

The first Body was found not even three hundred yards from the stream. It was a man dressed in Firebenders Armor painted black, laying on his stomach with one leg curled up, and the other stretched out. His body was bloated by the heat, his armor threatening to snap off of his form, his hands and the back of his neck were covered in burns.

The more bodies began to appear the further in they went, all laid out across the ground. Some on their sides, some slumped against trees, others looking skyward, their face's contorted into eternal fear. He had counted over twenty so far. Looking around he could see burn marks in some of the trees and on the ground, weapons ranging from swords to spears discarded by their previous owners.

Something every body had in common however was that they all had been burned. Several unfortunate souls they passed to a crisp, their features forever unrecognizable. "A battle happened here." Sung whispered though stating the obvious. Looking up he could see some of the tree tops had been singed black. "They were ambushed from above, their attackers waited for them to get in the center and struck hard and fast."

The number had gone up to well over thirty corpses, a Company sized force. By the look of their kit they had been Rangers, some still having pieces of bandoliers and leg pouches on their armor that they used to carry equipment in the field.

"H-how can you tell they were ambushed?" Ty Lee asked from behind, sounding as if she was trying to keep her composure.

"I've been on both sides of it." Sung explained. "Fire marks up in the trees like those down here were shooting fire upwards." Sung suddenly noticed something...how quiet it was. All day they had been hearing bird calls, but here no sound could be heard outside of their footfalls and the buzzing of hundreds if not thousands of of flies that moved from body to body. It was as if the animals themselves avoided this place after the carnage that had happened. "The way the bodies are spread out is a standard Ranger formation, they spread out in what's called a stalking Grid." Stalking Grid was the name of a Tactic where an advancing spread itself out in six foot intervals, it was a slow moving March but it gave those advancing space so they wouldn't get killed in tight formation. But it also meant that they knew they had been getting close to whatever their target had been.

They moved further inward, in front of them an younger man in his mid twenties, his black topknot coated in blood sat with his back against a tree. The area around his eyes had been burned black like he had taken fire directly to the face. In one of his limp hands a Jian laid. One of them had stepped on a twig and suddenly the man picked his head up. "W-who's there!" He shouted weakly as he lifted his sword and started swinging it wildly in front of him as he screamed. "Get away, Get away!"

Sung held a hand up, signaling the others to stop. "Easy Soldier easy, you're safe now." Sung said softly. A bit closer now Sung could see on the man's left side his uniform top was torn just below his armored torso. He could catch glimpses of the man's intestine through a gash on his side. It was a deep wound, how the man was even alive now was a miracle.

The man stopped his swinging, Turing his head and "looking" around trying to use sound alone to pinpoint where Sung was. "Are you reinforcements?" He asked hopeful.

Sung leveled his voice. "Yeah...we were looking for you." Sung said, the man was close to death, his last moments shouldn't be felt in fear. "What happened?"