Necromancer's Descent

7 - First Contact

Milo Hunter's Point of View

I stare quietly at the trail of blood hidden in the undergrowth of the forest. Two different sets of footprints are formed in the muddy riverbank, where our makeshift passing had once been.

I glance to the other side of the river, where the miasma clouds hang heavily and suck out the life of anything living. We've been patrolling the river every day for the last week, for once the miasma crosses the river, our village will need to evacuate immediately. If we don't, we'll be devoured like the villages now deep within the miasma field.

"Do you think it's survivors?"

Thomas asks cautiously as he fiddles with his wedding bracelet. Nothing moving out of the miasma filled area is probably good, and the chance of survivors...

"...It's been a little more than a day since they charged in and got annihilated, so it's possible... but-"

The river should still be quite far away from Fairfield where the latest attack was made..... if you can call it that. If they walked from Fairfield all the way here, and still bleeding this much, then they can almost only be- no, it's possible they got injured on the way.

I shouldn't be jumping to the worst possible conclusions.

The larger set of footprints may indeed belong to a knight or a soldier, as you can see the hints of thick leather soles and the bottom edge of sabatons... but the smaller set of footprints is different. The person may as well be wearing cloth on their feet. Someone in the army should be wearing better shoes than that, hinting that it's probably a villager.

"Hopefully it's just a looter that picked up a survivor," I mutter, as we begin following the tracks along the riverside, praying to god that it's not something far more sinister.

—-*-—

It doesn't take long before I spot the wispy crouching figure of a young woman drinking quietly from the river. Even if she's alive, she doesn't look well off. Even from here she looks like a beggar.

I sign to Thomas and Pete to stay quiet, before we cautiously sneak closer.

All that's left is to confirm the presence of the soldier. Honestly, I would have preferred for the soldier or knight to have been the one drinking water. That way this lump in my stomach would be far smaller. I push through the bushes, until we're about within ten meters of her, and sign for us to stop here.

I can't hear the movement or breathing of the soldier yet, and the young woman looks calm. If he had died during the night then she shouldn't have stayed... or at least so I assume. Her clothes are still those of a village girl's, so she hasn't been living like this for years.

She gets up from her kneeling position at the river, trembling and wobbling, like the sheer effort to stand is too much... yet what makes me freeze is her eyes as she turns around.

They're glowing.

A pale, eerie blue light comes from them, and despite my best effort to stay hidden, her eyes lock onto me.

My stomach twists, as I get a full look of her.

Her face is harrowed. Cut and scarred violently to the point I can't tell how she would have looked before that. Thick matted hair clings to her blood smeared face and head, and the embroidered ribbon that once kept it in place is entangled within greasy knots.

The glowing blue eyes widen in shock, confirming that she has seen me through the bushes.

"Who's there?"