They cut through the ruins of R'qsar. Tristan at the head, Ava and her midnight beast after him.
The ruins looked just about as he remembered them, except for baring a few new rubbles on the ground from the previous night's scuffle. The same broken houses and walls, dead plants and an utter stillness that tainted all. The fog too had almost completely retreated with the now rising Sun, only a few swirling wisps in the shadows that were always too stubborn lingered for just a little longer.
Tristan turned to glance back. Ava's eyes were unreadable as she looked about the ruins around her. His eyes met the beast's and he quickly swung away, suddenly very conscious of his thoughts. He had heard of magical creatures that could read impure intentions from minds. Was this one of those? The creature did indeed look magical, and his thoughts he wasn't very certain were pure.
"Um..." He started and Ava turned to look at him.
"I am listening." She said.
"What …is ...he? I have never seen an animal like that before." He asked pointing at her ride. The animal lazily turned its head toward him, showing he understood what he was asking.
"SHE." Ava replied, sounding somewhat offended and breaking him out of his thoughts. "Her 'Name' is Majteer, a Winid from the Northern lands, a child of rock and fire." The beast snorted out a thick stream of hot breath as if to confirm Ava's answer.
Tristan wondered what kind of land it would have been that shaped a creature such as this... Majteer.
Ava's reply hadn't answer the questions in his mind but Tristan nodded regardless. He took one more glance at Majteer who had taken a whiff of a dead weed on the ground and then proceeded to kick it with one of its front hooves. There was a sharp dent where the kick had landed with faintly smoking ashes inside.
"So this was..." Ava asked suddenly in a soft voice, "all done in one night?"
Tristan turned without pausing and saw Ava considering the destruction behind her. He leaned slightly to follow her gaze and saw only the familiar sight of his ravaged village.
"Yes." He paused, thinking. "Well most of it was done on the first night. But those…" He pointed toward where the newer destruction was "were done last night."
Ava nodded absentmindedly and turned to him. Her face, he still didn't know what it was thinking.
"Did you see it happen?" She asked, leveling her eyes at him.
"No, not the first time it had struck. But after... from far in my watches, I saw It was dark and big. It laughed and called in the voices of whoever it had taken in." Tristan tried but failed to feel strongly about it. He was away and hadn't seen anything firsthand. He only knew what he was able to gather from others. He did hear his sister's call from 'It' but also knew it wasn't her. There was magic in that voice, so similar to the one he had used with his master. So he didn't pursue it like many others did for their own family members, Or like his father did. He felt weird, strange about himself, his lack of care about it all. He was afraid, yes, but didn't feel strongly about anyone. Even losing his own family stung him just a scratch. Seeing others, even the grown men crying their eyes out, he just couldn't imagine himself doing it. He hadn't told his master of that, of his failure of feeling pain. He was afraid what reaction he might get.
"And only one of them? Were there more?" Ava asked without a beat. If the description surprised her she didn't show.
"Yes, just the one." He couldn't even imagine what two could do. One of them was enough to destroy their whole village in half a night.
"And the first time-" she stopped herself suddenly and started again in a softer tone that didn't match her. "I …understand if you don't want to talk about it."
Tristan shook his head. He couldn't think of a reason not wanting to talk about it. "It happened a month ago. Third day of the daughter's moon," He remembered the second moon just a tiny sickle in the sky, "I heard it came from the North." He spread his hands to show the course of the monster. "And started breaking everything and everyone. I was in the temple then,… tending to Nowsen. I only learned about it after half the village was already gone."
He turned to a heap of rubble to his left on an elevated land. Ash surrounded it of dry weeds and flowers. The heap had red painted stones and a few surviving wicker fences of the same shade. Inside was mostly ruined with ash and a skeleton of a bed peeking out of the rubble. His father's bed. The side of his eyes stung and an uncomfortable feeling rose in his chest and he turned away with a grimace. Ava was looking at him with the same unreadable expression and this time instead of meeting her eyes, he looked forward and walked slightly faster.
They had passed R'qsar and were entering Mermon's lands outside the village. Tristan noticed a small rocky walkway in between wide flat lands, green and gold once with crops but now it was all grey with ashes.
Far to his right, on a small rise of the land was a great dark heap of ash and stones where the Mermon's residence was. A beautiful two storey house the old man had built with craftsmen that he had hired from the city. The rocky road they were in was flanked by a foot tall fence of stacked rock that separated the road from the farms on either side.
Tristan climbed over to his right and started walking across the farm. Ava and her beast followed silently without any visible irritation. It was a shortcut to the woods they were going to as the road lead all the way around the massive farm land. It would have been impossible earlier as Mermon and his hounds were pretty strict about having no trespassers in his lands. Many had quite a few bite marks to prove it but Mermon being the richest as well as the biggest earner for the village, got away every time.
Tristan's feet crushed the delicately preserved remains of Golden Baf's ashes with dull crunches. He grimaced with every step, at all the waste around him, all the nights they had to sleep in empty stomach. Despite the tragedies he saw today, including the ruin of his own home, the worst he felt about was the cinders underneath his feet. Tristan turned to distract his mind and saw Ava walk carefully through these ashes. He also saw questions hanging from her face as she mindfully kept herself from asking them.
"The first house to be attacked." Tristan started. Ava nodded silently.
"We think fire also started here."
A slope descended as they neared the edge of the farmland. And about hundred or so feet away laid 'the twisting woods', as he liked to call them. Beside him Ava took a crisp breath as soon as it came visible and when he turned to her she sharply frowned.
"This is…" she trailed of.
"It happened after the monster came. The animals and birds had left and the trees, they twisted away from where the monster came and ...started dying." Tristan added simply, as he had no other way to explain it.
About a quarter mile ahead was the Nightmare forest. It was once so vast, lush with game that his father often chose to hunt there. A forest surrounding the Beik's Dagger, the mountain-peak that over the horizon was like a dark shape hiding in the clouds. Now the entire corpse of the forest remained a grey haze in the distance. The entire length of it was dead and dying trees.
On the ground were a network of twisted roots but if looked closely, they were the branches and limbs creating veins over the dry and rocky ground. Ahead, the network became more jumbles with uneven surfaces, with sharp holes in between the creaks of prone overlapping branches.
"You still want to go ahead?"
It seemed like Ava knew the answer yet asked. Still, Tristan nodded to confirm her and Ava looked ahead turning from him without saying anything more.
"Looks straight out of a nightmare…" She murmured mirroring Tristan's own thoughts about the scene. Then without saying a word she moved, on the veined earth with roots and branches, one no different than the other.
This time Tristan followed after her.