Those poor figures can barely walk, with dark circles under their eyes and very dirty, they drag themselves towards Alice by pure instinct, empty eyes of afflicted-souls, without perspective they just drag themselves.
A woman holds her right arm on her belly visibly broken, just to her right comes a dwarf with a deep cut on his face and where his left eye should be is empty, they moan softly, right behind them, a couple of twin dwarf children who would cry if they still had any strength.
Farther back is an old dwarf dragging his right leg with several arrows embedded in his right shoulder. And lastly a young dwarf at death's door, he drags both legs with no strength, his chest is raw, a tourniquet adorns his left wrist, another tourniquet adorns his right shoulder with a piece of bone just where should be his right forearm.
Alice ignores her reflex of getting ready to fight, those figures inspire more pity than fear, she hears the faint voices they emit, they don't speak in a coordinated way.
"Stop, one at a time, I can't understand with you all talking together" Alice speaks firmly and everyone get silent, as if they are waiting for something.
"Alright madam, you can talk" Alice realizes that having given them an order she would need to organize them, a group of whatever they are.
"Girl, please, please…" The woman extends one arm while keeping the broken one propped up on her bely.
"I don't understand what you want, then we come back to you later, calm down first" Alice holds up a flat hand in case that lady doesn't understand her words.
"Alright now sir" Alice doesn't expect much from that man.
"My face, my face, those things…" the man has a hard time speaking, and his words come out between moans of deep pain. The old man falls dead behind Alice, visibly due to blood loss.
"Alright you two now, please say something helpful" Alice sees the children look battered, hungry and scared. Both the boy and the girl faces have dark circles under their eyes and are swollen of crying a lot, the children walk past the man and woman in front of them and cling to Alice's legs without saying anything.
"Don't blame them, it's not something they could deal with, they're just ordinary people" Alice is stunned, despite being a great effort, that very injured young dwarf still maintain his lucidity.
The young man manages to get closer, Alice starts to prepare the camp again and those poor people wait patiently, the mere presence of Alice seems to reassure them.
She sees that her food is running out and she would even buy more in Riverin, but there must be nothing left there to buy, she thinks for a moment, she decides to share some with those poor figures, if necessary later she can hunt something.
Alice prepares a soup with some vegetables and roots, and her last modest piece of mutton. In less than an hour it's ready, but there's nowhere to serve people, they'll have to share the same plate.
Alice serves the young man first, who may just got his last meal, hoping that meal will give him the strength to tell her what happened.
When he finishes eating, she thinks about giving it to face shredded man, but as he can barely move his mouth, she gives the plate for the children to share it alternating spoons between each one, the children are hungry and quickly devour their dish, when they finish the young man looks a little better.
"Thanks!" the young man seems to want to talk more but is still very weak, he leans back against a tree, his eyelids are heavy, he has his eyes half closed.
"You, who seem to speak better, say what you know?" Alice sees that man are not capable of chewing anything and just drink a lot of the broth.
"I don't really know what to tell you" the young man pauses for a short breath and continues. "I'm one of…I was one of Riverin's guards" Another pause, he insists. "We were attacked, I can't say for sure why, it was all quick, brutal and confusing, they were beasts, they were ferals, they were soldiers, and I swear some looked like demons like in the legends"
The young man takes almost ten minutes due to his pauses to say this last part, he finishes closing his eyes and seems unconscious. Alice tries to shake him slightly, without response, the lady finishes with soup, with difficulty, she had to leave the plate on the floor, as she could only use one arm.
"Thank you very much, girl, I think I can tell you something now" the lady returns the plate to Alice, who sees that there is nothing left in the pan, rinses the pan and plate with a little water and puts back her things into her bag.
"I didn't really understand what was going on either, I just had time to get away only with the clothes on my back and not even that was left right" the lady looks at her clothes that should be couture, Alice gets up and looks for a branch to immobilize that lady's arm, thats is all she can do without magic.
"As that young man had said, it all happened very quickly, I was in the part of town where the attack started, it was already getting dark" the lady is also unable to speak very continuously, the gentleman beside her closes his eyes and leans a little forward, one of the children nudges him and he collapses to the ground.
The child looks panicked, like he had broken that old man, and that he would be scolded for it.
Alice and the woman ignore it, they know that man and the young man could not resist injuries like those much longer, both the young man and the old man no longer seem to breathe, the lady makes the sign with the hand of the blooming rose to send their souls to be received by the gods.
Alice takes a piece of cloth that she had taken from a corpse the day before and uses it, to attach branch to her arm and immobilize the lady's arm, the lady moans as Alice does it, when Alice finishes she speaks again.
"What I were talking about?" the old woman tilts her head to the side, se thinks for a moment and resumes her speech. "Ah! Yes, they attacked at dusk, all I saw was Raverin guard lasted a few minutes." Alice goes out in search of a bigger branch now to serve that lady as a cane.
Alice finds one that seems to be firm, but not too hard, and very light too, she cuts the branch to not hurt the lady's hand and leaves it beside her, Alice sits down a little to listen what that lady still have to say, it's past noon, and she hasn't even passed Riverin yet.
"Some of us got away with a lot of things early on, but I imagine by your reaction to seeing us that they shouldn't have gone far" the lady seems pretty smart, she really just needed to pull herself together.
"They were ambushed less than two days' journey from here" Alice is sorry to inform this, she doesn't want to leave those three survivors hopeless.
"There's not much hope for us? Isn't?!" the lady's rhetorical question is obvious and Alice tries not to answer with words or with her face, which the lady already understands as an answer by itself.
"Sorry lady, but I have to go my way" Alice feels that she must enter the city in the dead of night.
"Girl… I can't stop you, but don't go, for getting this far you must be very brave, you shouldn't have been the only one to come to Riverin these days, but anyone seeing the bodies on the road, as you said, they must have immediately returned to where they came from" the lady looks desolate again, she was counting on Alice's company to escape.
Alice opens her backpack again and takes out a piece of jerky and hands it to the lady she keeps it in her last available pocket.
"Thanks for everything girl, but where are you going so determined?" the lady is curious, what she can be worth that girl's life.
"I have to go to Zackar's Red Mountain, and the rest I'll find out on the way, I hope" Alice's reply sounds silly to that lady who simply replies with a shake of her head and another thanks.
The children leave with the lady, they walk a little and then the kids run back to hug Alice's legs once more.
Alice wanders, hidden in the forest around what used to be Riverin, almost everything is ruined and she doesn't even have to go in to see it, few buildings remain partially standing, lots of rubble and bodies in sight, or part of them.
Lots of signs of corrosion and flames everywhere, much of it must have been reduced to ashes, this was a place of prosperity, now only the ashes are left, Alice thinks.