Cursed

Chapter 25: Hungry Insects

Heat was burning the top of my head, making my blonde hair feel like a heated plate. My skin felt like it was sizzling under the afternoon sun. And to top it off, my ribs burned every time I breathed or moved, while my right arm was a dead weight hanging along my body. All I really wanted was a nice cold sip of water and some cool house that would cover me from the sun. Who knew it could be this hot in the Green Lands? I certainly didn't.

My tongue licked my spliced lips once more in a futile attempt to moisten them. My eyes peered at the village in the distance - one that didn't seem to lessen much, no matter how long we walked. It had become larger, not much, but at least the separate houses were visible now. It wasn't a dark dot on the horizon anymore.

After this trip, I was going to stay far away from meadows and open fields. They were painfully long and boring. Nothing really happened around here. There were no sounds other than the wind and the rustling of the still low growing corn, wheat and maize. Animals existed of birds high in the sky, too far to really identify which ones were circling around and rats along the path. Those slithered away at my loud dragging feet. And Kate - well, she strode before me with a pace too quick for me to follow.

Sometimes, when I jogged behind her, to lessen the distance between us, I heard her mumble to herself. Ever since, I had wondered if she was thinking aloud or simply singing a song. It made me curious about what else the princess did without notice. Because it had become clear that her nervousness wasn't the only side of her. Yes, she clearly had trouble with staying still and her mind always seemed to be working overtime, yet somehow that only made her even more intriguing.

Kate turned around, her face completely covered in the shadows of her dark hood. Her long auburn hairs peaked out from the sides, glowing almost red in the sharp sunlight. Red that should scare me, but that nowadays wormed its way into my life through all the little cracks of my being. She didn't halt or slow her quick and short steps. Instead she turned back around and continued her walk.

By the time the sun started to shift lower into the sky, and warm my back more than it did my head, the city of death was finally in reach.

Tech Duinn.

The stories must've started at the entrance of the city. Simply looking at the irregularly placed houses of the town made an unease crawl up my spine. Bones, both big and small, formed the structures of the houses. Most were tents, made from animal skin, wood and clay-covered bones - animal and human alike. It was a strange sight. Even a little bit gruesome.

Think about Ayana's story, I tried to remind myself. The rumors were disappointing. A lie. Fake.

I noticed that lately, I had felt a lot more emotions - mainly fear, which I didn't like - than I used to. I was a trained fighter, a town with empty rumors shouldn't scare me like this. And yet, it did. It made me face the uncertainty of my life right now. Would someone even come looking for me, if I got lost here? Perhaps my mother, but she wasn't allowed. Ura certainly wouldn't, or it would be in the name of 'helping me', perhaps the lost souls weren't so bad after all.

Tech Duin was larger than I had imagined. It wasn't a simple campsite with a few dozen people. The white and brown houses stretched all the way across the high towering mountain wall, which was still far enough away to not tilt my head all the way back to see the top. There must be at least a few hundred people. Somehow, I had imagined these people as a group of wild, unstructured cultists.

Kate halted at the first tent, an animal skin set up on two wooden pillars. It casted a long shadow on us. My knees almost buckled in anticipation, but Kate's posture made me stop mid-sigh. Her eyes searched the empty street in front of her. She wore a certain carefulness around her, visible in the strong lines of her body, even with it being hidden behind the royal cloak. It was the more robust moving, the quick jab when her head turned around. It was a strange sight, I realized, a vampire on alert. Even a bit terrifying.