Knife Tails and Blood Trails

Cold Bodies

In a land neither here nor there, with a passage of time that hurts more than helps, a figure picks its way through the underbrush. Her footsteps land near soundlessly on mottled dirt and grass, an old hog trail that has been abandoned for years, and listens to the wood around her. Her ears perk as the grass suddenly starts to sing with an oncoming breeze.

She pauses and takes a deep breath through her nose. The wind is a reliable of source of information, and it carries hints of her surroundings that are vital. On this particular breeze are the scents of the nearby river, and blood.

Lots of blood.

Satisfied that she's going in the right direction she continues onward, leather and cloth subtly shifting as she moves. The forest grows still again a second later, just in time for her to break the tree line.

Ezri pulls the hood of her cloak down, and looks out on a massacre.

Bodies, human and dwarf and some elf, lay strewn over the land. They go out as far as her eyes can see, never seeming to end. Like an ocean, a voice whispers in her head. She shushes it, but can't help but agree.

Crude though it may be, it doesn't make it any less true. Still, a little bit of self-discipline wouldn't hurt every now and then, especially in the presence of the dead.

Especially considering what she has to do.

She takes her first step, and then immediately abandons any and all self-discipline. Whether one is crude or no, blood soaking into soles of your boots is never a pleasant experience.

And, she decides a second later, neither is further squishing a bloodied tongue into the ground.

"Why can't the blood just stay in the bodies," she mutters and steps over to her right, dragging her boot through the blood-stained grass. Her left boot now has considerably more fluid soaked into it then her right, but at least she no longer has tongue remains on it.

It's the small things, Ezri tells herself.

Besides, avoiding getting at least a little moist in this situation is unavoidable. So many fluids have been split and popped out that the air hovering above the ground is stained red. Might as well cut her losses. Besides, she has work to do.

Now, most people argue that stealing from the dead is not an ethical practice, and they are correct. No one should steal from the dead, however maybe they should of thought better of that rule before implementing it.

Only a fool would throw away the vast amounts of riches ahead of her, ripe for taking. And for war orphans and merchants? An absolute gold mine of possibility. Besides, she thinks, no one will be around to use them anyway. Might as well do something with them as opposed to let them rot.

It's one of the only times Ezri is grateful for her sense of smell.

A little further on, and there's suddenly a glint in the corner of her eye. She steps around a woman whose pretty blue eyes are only hanging by strands of tissue and comes across the corpse of a dwarf. His own eyes are closed, signaling a slow, painful death, and in his hand is a blade with jewels braided into the hilt. As she reaches forward to take it, her eyes catch on the little band on his left hand.

She leaves it there when she moves on.

The next is an ear that once belonged to an elf with thin, drooping ornaments embedded into the flesh. So much so, that she has to withdraw the tiny knife from her sleeve in order to carve them out. Probably how the thing got torn off in the first place, she scoffs. Even the greenest warrior knows you shouldn't wear such jewelry in the face of battle.