Morden enjoyed breakfast with everyone and headed to the outskirts of the village with Cauwen and Grenda where the wagon was being prepared. The other brought along food, water, their armor and weapons for the journey whereas Morden brought only the clothes on his back and the his old clothes, washed and cleaned of the blood and dirt staining them. They boarded the wagon and set off for the sight of the colony.
-
After four days of traveling, they arrived at the sight. The voices in Morden's head were much calmer than before but still noisy. He was conflicted in his emotions . It was late in the morning and the sky was covered with gray clouds. The wind was blowing hard causing the remains of some of the lighter tent materials to flail. Morden, Cauwen, and Grenda left the wagon while Dashra insisted on staying at the wagon. "I'm old and someone needs to watch the wagon," he said.
Morden walked through the sight surveying the area with the couple behind him. The remains stayed exactly the same as he had left them, and good thing too. If Morden was going to search for clues, rain or something else disturbing the sight would only have hurt his efforts to find clues as to the culprit. When he got to the other side of the colony grounds, he went to the burial sight nearby that he had toiled over making. It wasn't as neat and clean as he had remembered, but he was proud knowing that he made it himself. Friends deserved to be buried by the hands of friends and not to rot in the sun. It was a tragedy that he was the last one left, yet also a blessing.
For the first time since the incident, Morden was glad to have been alive. He was glad to be able to move around and breath the air, to live the the lives of his friends through his own. 'I will be the legacy of my colony, the lone survivor. I WILL be the best Dismantler our colony has ever known. I WILL bring this evil to justice.'
As he stood over the graves of Karaia and Broffe, Morden prayed a silent prayer. Morden opened his eyes, anger and curiosity refueling his drive to seek out justice. He turned to the two behind him and said, "Come. let's look for anything that can point us to what did this or where they went."
Cauwen and Grenda both nodded. they all agreed to split up and look for evidence. Morden went to the center of the colony. The first thing he decided to do was inspect the spears that he took down. He only now realized just how large the spears were, yet also how crude. They weren't crude in the sense of primitive, but in how rigid and brutal they were. The spear heads were not smooth or curved, but were serrated. If looking from the tip, they resembled an X and were incurvated. Something of this size would be unreasonable to be used after one hit because you would have to push the entire spear out of the victims other side to get it out. Morden checked out the rest of the surroundings.
There were very distinct signs of battle here, from craters in the area to the scorched earth. The craters were clearly made by Dismantlers and the scorched earth was a sign of angel runes most likely. Most angel runes enhanced the individual but others allowed the direct control of elements or the world around them. One interesting thing that Morden noticed was how they were almost all centered around one area, as if they were all targeting one individual. 'Why would so much force be aimed at one target? There's nothing that could take this much damage from a group of Dismantlers and live to tell the tale.'
Morden wandered the areas surrounding the battleground and the one thing that he noticed was that the tents seemed to have bits of thick, brown, curly hair in them. He was examining the hair, when the voices started to grumble, sending a shiver down his spine. "You know what did this. Why are you hesitating?" Morden looked over his left shoulder and saw Karaia standing there covered in blood, tears streaming down her face.
"You aren't real. Go away."
"Why would you ignore me?! Is that why you left?! You knew those things were coming so you ran and hid while I went back to protect Broffe and everyone else! No, you sent them here. You told them where we were so you could live!"
"I said shut up!" He shouted. Karaia screamed in anguish. Morden saw her bleed out of every orifice and then dissipate into thin air. The view shocked him. Despite her disappearing, he could still hear her screaming. To his right, he noticed Broffe standing there in his Dismantler outfit. he smiled and blood flowed out of his mouth. The next second, he disappeared just like Karaia did but without a sound. Morden fell backwards while looking at his surroundings. The tents and small portions of the ground all started to ripple like water. The ripples extended about a half inch into the air. It was like seeing the surface of water from underneath.
He felt a hand on his left shoulder and flinched. He saw Grenda beside him. "Are you okay, Morden? I heard you shouting and came by. You're pale as a ghost." Morden steadied his breathing. It took a lot to make him scared, but watching his dead friends haunt him was definitely something that sent a shiver down his spine.
"I see Karaia sometimes, like when I ran out a few days ago. This time it was worse. Much worse."
"Don't worry friend, we are here for you." Grenda offered him a hand up which Morden took. He looked around and the world was still rippling slightly, but in much more condensed areas. He walked over to one particular spot which was right in the center of all the impacts and scorched earth. "This spot is special," he said. "Something was here, and it left something behind."
"What do you mean? I can see a fight happened here, but what do you think is special here?" Grenda grabbed a little bit of earth and let it slowly pour out of his hand. Morden caught a glimpse of a small ripple in the earth. He quickly caught that area of dust while it was still in the air. He opened his hand and sifted through the dirt when he noticed several thick curly hairs in the small patch.
"This. Whatever this is, it doesn't belong. Let's find Cauwen. We'll share anything we found." The three regrouped together.
"Did you find anything, Grenda?" Morden asked. "Only that some of the tents were completely destroyed along with the tent poles. those things are thicker than my arms and were all snapped like twigs! Maybe it was the other humans but it caught my attention. There no reason in my mind to break those unless you were trying to break it or as collateral damage."
"That's true. What about you Cauwen?"
"I noticed the same thing, but I also found a blade, lodged in a log. Bigger than any blade a normal sized creature could wield, not even humans. Aside from that the area was riddled with craters and uprooted earth, clear signs of a struggle. Some of the craters looked like they had large footprints in them, no shoes or sandles. Aside from that, I didn't know humans shed so much."
"Are you talking about the hair all over the tents?"
Cauwen nodded. "We don't. Let me see where you noticed it the most." They all walked over to the sight where Cauwen noticed the anomaly.
The first thing Morden saw was that the tent in ruins was collapsed on one side. "I think that one of the assailants was launched into the tent. You can clearly see that the tent fell from one specific spot, which is from the direction of the log with the blade in it. It's also covered in thick hair, but unlike the hair I found, this one isn't curly."
They all walked to the log with the blade in it about 100 feet away. Cauwen was not exaggerating, the blade was longer than his whole body and made of pitch black steel. Morden examined the craftsmanship. It resembled the weapons that the demon statues used while fighting with Morden. Jagged and brutish in their design, made for butchering, not cutting cleanly. Whatever this weapon cleaved through would be torn to shreds as the edge was serrated just like the spears.
Morden ripped out the weapon from the log. Even with his monstrous strength, he was forced to hold it with two hands to keep it steady. "What the hell is this thing made of, it's too heavy for its size?! And what the fuck used it?" Morden attempted to swing it, but the hilt of the weapon was too wide for a proper grip and it flew out of his hands several feet in front of him. He stared at the weapon for a moment when he noticed it rippling. He watched to see what was going on with it, but it seemed to be still. Some movement behind a tree several feet away from the sword caught his attention. It was Karaia again. Covered in blood and crying, Morden did his best to ignore her. He turned around and she scream. When he turned back to look, she was gone again but her voice remained. Cauwen and Grenda both noticed him spacing out. They looked at each other, knowing what was going on but decided to leave it be.
Together, they all moved over to one of the large footprints. It was close to an arms length across and broke through the earth in specific spots. It looked as though that particular spot had either been stomped or a massive blow from above caused the indent. Several other areas had "launch" points where the creature had stepped off so hard it left dirt piled up behind.
"This thing is huge," said Cauwen. "At least fifteen feet tall, give or take two. Maybe its feet are disproportionate compared to us but we know it's huge.
Morden walked back to the collapsed tent and examined the hair embedded in the fabric. There was one distinct difference between this hair and the hair he found himself. This hair was straight and thin. "There was more than one culprit." He pointed out his findings to them.
Grenda said, "It's highly unlikely that it was just two.I'd say there were at least twenty, otherwise how would they be able to keep everyone from escaping? They are clearly at least physically as strong as humans and I believe they might be just as fast too. If that's true they could easily work their way into the center of the colony like-"
"-Like sheep to the slaughter," Morden whispered under his breath. He furrowed his eyebrows remembering the sight of Mathar and his friends on spears. I'm going to see if I can find any more information on this at Gorod. Hopefully there are some historians there that might know a thing or two as to what it is."
Morden tore off a portion of the tent fabric with the hair on it and held onto it. The shimmer that the hair gave off sent a chill down his spine. ' I don't know what is causing this shimmer, but it's going to drive me crazy if I don't find out... I'm already crazy though.'
After a final visit to the burial grounds and bidding his friends farewell, the group walked back to the wagons together and met up with Dashra. They shared the discoveries with him as they boarded the wagon. Morden even showed him the fabric he had collected and proceeded to wrap it up in some spare cloth.
"The more we look into it the more my theory seems to be correct. I do not wish to stop you, in fact I encourage for you to find justice, but please take this slow. Anger will only lead to clouded judgement, and as we say, 'The lightning always strikes when the sky is obscured.'"
"Thank you, everyone, for your help. I will take heed to your words, Dashra. If the opponent is the ancient enemy built to kill angels, the last thing I'm going to do is charge in there swinging without a solid plan. If it was 20 of them and they wiped out my village, I do not plan to charge in like an idiot and die in the name of vengeance."