A Field Of Death And Silence

The Horns of Gou

The sky went on forever, unbroken by mountains, or clouds or buildings.
It wasn't hot, or cold, and the very land seemed empty of time. It was stagnant, and when a breeze did crawl past, cracking the dead air, even that was a sickly lukewarm.
    The Gousii sea were long flat lands, of tall dry grass, vast and motionless but for that stale breeze that blew through and made the odd, gray-green, razor-sharp grass hiss, as its blades scraped against each other in an angry symphony.
    Her legs were bloody and still bleeding even with her inhuman healing. The grass was so rough and sharp the instant she began to heal another blade had slit a fresh thin wound next to it.
    Her face had paid the price the night prior. when she'd laid her cloak down beneath the only tree she could find— a monument in the horizontal world, she'd seen it nearly a mile away; and had tried to sleep for the first time in what had felt like weeks.
    She'd woken up in the morning, her face raw, and stinging, and sticky with blood. A blade of the wretched plant had pierced through the cloak, and in her misery she told herself that at the very least it hadn't blinded her.
    It was growing dark once more, the suns falling fast over the distant mountains to the east.
    Her stomach growled, and her throat was as dry as the grass around her.
Still not dry enough, though, to debate whether it would be worth it to gnaw on one of the knife-like blades in hopes to get whatever nutrients it might have.
She couldn't imagine a human surviving here.
    It'd only been a week since she'd drank last, she could go another, and another two without food... if she had to.
    She didn't want to have to.
West.
West was to water. West was where the food was, West was to Shin'Anshan. West was to her sisters.

    It was another three days before she saw hide or hair of anything other than desolate landscape and grass.
    Her throat ached now, every swallow scratching its dry planes together, her tongue like wool against the roof of her mouth.
    There was a small hill in the normally flat landscape— that she'd stared at nearly as long as she's stared at that lone tree, and she'd paused atop it when she broken over its edge, and the tops of roofs and chimney smoke became visible against the mute blue sky.
    It wasn't the tan sandstone walls or archways of Ya'Taoeii architecture that greeted her however, as she broke the cover of the hill. Though she'd known somewhere deep down there were still weeks, maybe months, from the outlining cities of Shin'Ashan, something longing and desperate had coiled inside her— ready to pounce at any sign of home, like a snake from the grass.
It wasn't. It wasn't home.
    She'd have been able to hear the bazaars, people selling their wares and bargaining over better ones.
    The clang of the palace guards armour.
    Her sisters voices....
    No. Not shin'Ashan.
    The grass huts were woven from the horrid unforgiving plant around her, bleeding her slowly like a swine for ritual.
    The one thing the damned Gousi Flats had in abundance.
    It was unfair to judge their choice in building materials though, there were two things that the land was abundant with. Grass, and sky, and one could not make huts out of sky.
    Though she didn't know what they were protecting themselves from. It had rained once in her journey— even though, if she wasn't mistaken, it was supposed to be rain-season.
    This was a wretched land.
    The bottom halves, or what she could see of them, were made of some kind of dirt, it was a ruddy-burgundy against the grey grass roofs scattered erratically around the plateau.
     It was not a small village, if she could compare it to the only two others she'd come across in Gou. The first having been the one she'd been held in. She'd been blindfolded in that one hut for weeks though, and only gathered the size of the village whilst she watched it burn.
    There was a cry, loud and high that had her dropping to her stomach so hard and fast she winded herself and nearly vomited her empty stomach-lining.
    That was the least of her worries at dropping as quickly as she had though, there was a pinch at her side, in the squishy-bits of her belly. She recognized her mistake instantly, and only her training, and the weeks she had already spent being sliced and slashed by the unforgiving grass kept her silent. The front of her gown turned sticky and damp and clung to her skin.
    It was laughter, children's laughter.
Not a cry.
Not the crying of children.
    A cold sweat nipped its way down her spine, leaving wet kisses in its wake.
    She didn't want to call it luck that the infighting between the chieftains in the area, had allowed her to escape in the chaos.
     It had been luck that she'd managed to suck up all her courage into the act of breaking her own thumb—only an instant before the screaming had began, but she didn't feel lucky when she'd swept the tent's flap-door open, only to be met with blistering heat and the vacant yellow-eyes of the young goblin lythling who'd brought her food for the weeks she'd been held there.
    He'd never said a word to her, had only frowned and grunted, when she'd thanked him.
But he was a child... just a child.
    She'd tried to heal him.
     Pressed her hands into his little green chest next to the arrow imbedded there, and tried, but there had been nothing left to heal.

    Now, the children crested over the hill, wide grins and laughter, playing chase of some sort, as the little girl in front fled her friends, trying—from what she could see through the blades dangerously close to her face—to keep a mangled looking doll away from their grabby little hands.
    There skin wasn't green as her captors had been, but a grey hue like the grass around them, no crown of horns or tusks either; that would have marked them as Cothhorns, or Verdrian.
    There features were rather elven also, but for the sharp straight brows, strong jaws, and red eyes that she could see glowing even from a distance.
It had been so long since she'd studied the Five Clans and their characteristics. Her sister's voice was a jumble of condescension in her head, tone full of disappointment; and she couldn't differentiate the useful information from the memory of her eye rolling exasperation.
    She squinted to see more clearly through the dryness in her eyes, any characteristics she may recognize. Taking quick note that there shirts had no backs, only thin straps that tied up behind their necks. She'd seen this style of clothing before—
    It was then that her squinting and focused eyes, that she caught site of them, just adjacent the girls off in the distance.
The Horns of Gou.
    The mountains were so far away that she could barely see them against the blue grey sky, lost in a haze of the horizon. Marking the end of Gou, and the beginning of Shin'Ashan. Her people. Her sisters.
So far.
    So far away from her.
    It would be months. Months. So much longer than she'd anticipated.
    The Children's laughter grew closer, snapping her out of her reverie, and slicing her cheek open when she turned too fast to watch them.
    There faces were still round with youth, though two of the three girls had small sheathed blades, dangling on necklaces around their throats. They swang, the polished stone catching the light, as they ran.
    The eldest, no more the thirteen, had a second larger blade sheathed in a leather belt around her narrow young hips.
    They grew nearer, racing up the hill towards her— chasing the youngest as she fled. All laughter; young and innocent. White hair flowing behind them in their short loose braids.
Too close. They were getting too close.
    It took all of the discipline and control she had, which was very little; if anyone ever asked her sisters, to press herself further down into the long sharp grass.
    The blade already embedded just below her rib slipped deeper.
    She gnawed her cry into her lip. She could feel the fresh sensitive skin trying to heal—trying to knit the wound back together around the blade to no avail.
    And her body began to panic as she held herself still.
Get it out. Get it. Out.
    The girls stopped as the youngest twirled and grinned and began to sing a little; something in High Gou, or maybe Old Gou, or even Vowse. She couldn't be sure. She'd never regretted ignoring her lessons more than this day.
    Though, knowing goblins it was likely a pretty ballad about disembowelment.
    Either way, she could barely think. The panic was turning to shock, her hands were beginning to tremble. She needed to get the blade out. Now.
    A cold sweat broke out across her body. The sticky dampness had spread across her gown and her elbows on the ground below now rested in a similar warm wetness.
    The girl continued the sing and twirl until the eldest snatched the doll from her with a frown.
    "How have you managed to get this so dirty. I only finished making it last week!" the girl said, now in New Gousi—with such condensation and irritation she knew then that they must be sisters.
She thanked the gods, through her trembling. That they spoke the one language she could understand.
    The little one pouted but only for a moment, before her face knitted into a stubborn scowl.
    "I've been careful with her! She's my favourite—" but before she could continue, the elder cut her off.
    Those red eyes had gone black, her pupils swallowing the iris like an abyss.
She put a hand up and the other girls stilled around her, silver bangles, that she hadn't noticed, clinking gently.
    Her stomach dropped, and in the pain nearly made her vomit what ever contents her body still had.
    "Do you smell that?" The eldest girl, hissed. Those black eyes searching.
    Instantly, the other girls eyes shut, noses up turned to the sky. As if the wind in this land only bowed to them. When they opened their eyes, they stared at eachother a moment. A conversation of silence. Then, the eldest stuffed the toy back into her sister's hands; shoving her behind her, none to gently.
    "What?" The littlest asked, eyes wide, not black like the others, "what is it?"
    Her heart pounded in her ears, almost to loud for her to overhear the eldest's whispered reply.
    "Blood. I smell blood."

*Not Beta-edited... at all*