The heat of the sun had washed over the faces of the two soldiers, almost like a blessing considering how frigid the night had been. They both awoke, hurriedly gathering what supplies they had left and packing them in their packs. At this point, they picked a direction and started walking. Still, they were trapped within the thick woodlands without a map to even give them a slight hand.
Names had power.
Any experienced member of the Royal Army or even Adventurer could tell you that
To pick the lock on a soul, you needed its name. A name told you everything. The conventions of a name told you of the people who coined it. Etymological roots spoke to the historical circumstances of its origin, and each linguistic change that mutated it along the way told a unique story.
Names were everything.
Which was why Christoff's ignorance of the name of the place where they found themselves so vexed him. As someone who specialized in Reconnaissance, his memory contained no record of this area.
Christoff pressed his hand to the Re-Estize icon on his chest plate before letting out a sigh. His blue eyes met the sky. Christoff had likened walking through the former lands of Re-Estize to stepping into a stream of icy water and feeling the aching cold slowly seeping up through his flesh until his entire body was rigid.
"Three pieces." Nathan said, his mouth full of bread as he spoke.
"Hm?" Christoff turned to him "Oh. If nobility even mattered anymore I would give you crap about talking with your mouth full."
"Our Rations are running dangerously low, we need to figure something out quick."
"Wow, I thought we were doing fine." Christoff replied sarcastically.
Nate had once been a part of Marquis Boullope's Militia, back when being apart of something like that had meant anything. Before the fall, he had been reabsorbed back into the regular Royal Army.
"I see. Your sarcasm may yet be enough to push me to the grave." Nate said, letting out a sigh.
"Well, what did you have in mind? It isn't like we could simply request new supplies or see a quartermaster."
"Obviously not, if fortune shines on us once we hit the edge of this woodlands we will run into a village. Hopefully it has not been touched by the Sorcerer King." Nate said, taking another bite of his bread
"The odds of finding something like that are small, I would have a better chance of taking Lakyus out on a date." Christoff scoffed, twirling his partisan around in his hand.
"It is rather refreshing to see the former Mithril adventurer is still fantasizing over the beautiful Adamantite adventurer. Tell me, how did that go last time?" Nate pressed Christoff
Christoff replied with a shrug "Couldn't tell you, I stopped adventuring once the first massacre had taken place."
Christoff took out a piece of bread and began to eat it also, it was the only thing that could even pass the time in their current situation. A sigh escaped his lips before he took a bite out of the bread.
Their current quest they had set for themselves was like chasing a whisper of thought in an angry mob, a hundred echoes spreading from the source, each amplifying exponentially and mutating until all trace of the original was obscured.
Armor that was once worn by the Re-Estize would also not be a suitable option, so they knew that once they had finally found this village they would have to change out of it and figure something out.
There was little that they could do and they knew it. Sweat clung to every fiber of their uniforms causing their undershirts to become sticky.
Little could be done about that though, aside from washing their shirts with their weary hands., Even then, that was the least of their problems.
Nate and Christoff had been getting headaches as of recent, dehydration would do that to a man. Nate could tell that Christoff's headaches were far more fierce than his.
Christoff stood up swaying slightly, with his right gauntlet hanging off of his belt and pressing his raw knuckles into his forehead to alleviate some of the pain.
After a short while, the pain had disappeared and Nate also rose to his feet.
"Come, we should leave now while it is still light enough to see what we are doing outside."
Christoff nodded, staying in one spot would mean a higher chance of dying.
Though, he found himself wondering if that would be such a bad thing at this current moment. Everything that he had once known was destroyed. Gone in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
The duo progressed deeper through the woodland, though unknown to them they are almost at the end. Christoff leaned against a tree for a moment, letting out a sigh and taking a quick swig of water that had been collected in his waterskin from a pond they found not long ago.
While they were there, he had tried to kill fish with his spear but the task proved to be too much of a hassle. Surely he could have done it, but he would rather see what is going on with the outskirts of the Re-Estize.
With the birds chirping, it was hard to imagine that a war had taken place here. Nature carried on as normal, while humanity suffered.
The smile that twisted his features was cruel, but short-lived; Christoff winced as a thin trickle of blood ran from the cut beneath his eye that he had just received from a thorn bush. It looked almost like a red tear.
He had despaired of ever seeing any life again. Their quest was as futile as reading a message in a bottle washed upon the shores, writing a reply and casting it back into the waters in hopes the original sender would read it.
But they had only one option, and to fail in any task, even an impossible task, was to invite terrible retribution. Better to attempt to fight their fate than die empty handed without trying to do anything.
"Once we get to this place, if it exists, we will have to change out of this armor. We will surely be killed for even wearing this." Christoff stated, wiping the trickle of blood off his face and soon after another droplet had begun to form in the cut.
"It does exist. It has to." Nate breathed. Pushing heavy brush out of his way, the element of surprise would surely not be on their side.
The duo sounded like elephants trampling on brush, even Christoff who was experienced with the art of Reconnaissance had tossed aside his ideals and moved as fast he could just to get out of the woods.
"So hopeful, I hope it works out. For both of us." Christoff said, stomping over bushes that had been in his path.
Nate thought about speaking up about how Christoff's negativity was just going to be a burden, but he refrained from doing such a thing. A small part of him felt the same way, he just sealed it away in the deepest depths of his consciousness.
During their travels within these woods, they had found something. A cathedral, clearly abandoned to time. It caught both of their attentions as the medium sized structure had come into their field of view.
It was made out of the same cyclopean stone they had seen at the archway a night prior, as they approached it looked to be almost intact.
"Check this out." Nate said, gesturing for Christoff to come over.
The door had seemingly been broken open but no human could have been able to do such a thing. Well, unless your name was Gagaran but she was nowhere near these two. Part of the wooden door remained, the other part appeared to be torn off and tossed to the outside.
"This has to be the Sorcerer Kingdom's doing if that wasn't obvious enough already." Christoff said, drawing his partisan and bringing it to a ready stance.
Nate had followed suit, drawing his longsword. "Check out the inside, I will check the immediate area."
Christoff for a moment considered joking around with the man, but now both of them were in the same amount of danger.
Christoff slowly stepped inside, the old wooden floor creaking as he moved. He shook his head, he now found himself in a horror story that he read as a kid.
What an actual joke.
His eyes scanned the room, his partisan closely following where his eyes had drifted to.
The interior was a disaster, the benches had been smashed in half and the podium had been lodged into the wall that leads into the backroom. Whatever had happened here, he was glad that he missed it.
He heard a trickle, almost like a drop of water hitting a puddle. He glanced in the direction, seeing nothing at the time.
Drip.
There was that damned noise again, he let out a sigh as he turned his body again.
Drip.
He advanced further towards the sound, which of course had been in the darkest corner of the cathedral. This time, he felt he was walking in a puddle as liquid splashed around. One last time.
Drip.
That drip had landed on his pauldron and he could smell it. The old familiar scent of iron, it had to be blood. He reached to his belt and pulled out a torch, he imbued his Partisan with lightning for a moment and watched as the torch caught on fire and it illuminated the area.
He was standing in a puddle of blood, though that much he gathered by now. Shreds of clothes had been scattered across the puddle along with what looked like a dagger.
He raised the torch into the air and reluctantly looked up.
The orange, flickering light that was being emitted from the torch had finally caught a glimpse of what had awaited.
Christoff saw a man, with what appeared to be part of one of the benches plunged deep into his chest and through the wooden roof of the Cathedral keeping him pinned. His eyes had rolled into the back of his head and his face was locked with terror. Clearly that is the look he had when he met his end
This was no ordinary soldier he was looking at. In fact, it was no soldier at all. This was just a citizen.
How could a citizen have found their way this far out? A million thoughts had run through Christoff's mind but he decided to ignore them for now. He bit the inside of his cheek, turning to face away from the impaled corpse.
The second element of the scene that drew Christoff was not the blood and body parts, or the broken pieces of armor scattered across this bare section of the wooden floor. It was two bodies that had been lying next to it.
Two more citizens. Or rather, by the look of their clothes, villagers. One donned a bloodied pink dress and the other an over shirt with pants ripped to the point it exposed his pale left leg. It looked also as if their heads had been cut clean from their bodies, but they were no where to be seen.
Christoff shook his head, confusion began to overwhelm his normal thought process.
"Get in here!" Christoff shouted, not caring for whatever else would follow. He wanted his comrade to see this and make sense of whatever was going on.
The longer he looked at the bodies, the more he could tell. The man was laying on his stomach, or at least that was how he died. But interestingly enough, he already had an exit wound on his back.
The woman had been laying on her back, her hands looked to be broken and contorted. She had a deep gash going across her left breast and ending at her navel.
Nate rushed in, sword still at the ready. But as soon as he saw what Christoff was looking at, his jaw had dropped.
"I take it you didn't see anything like this outside?" Christoff asked, bringing his attention towards Nate who had been walking towards him.
"No, nothing." He said, shaking his head. He couldn't believe the Sorcerer Kingdom would resort to such atrocities.
"I doubt even the Baharuth would stoop to such levels." Nate sighed, clutching the hilt of his sword in anger.
"You know better to bring that name up now of all times." Anger had flared in Christoff's aura as soon as he heard the name "Baharuth."
"Apologies Christoff, I had forgotten that the wounds of the most recent annual war were fresh in your mind."
They were, but as everyone was aware the Baharuth had stooped to working with the Sorcerer Kingdom and that fact alone had infuriated him beyond any belief.
"Whatever, let us get a move on before we end up like these poor lads." Christoff muttered before making his way towards the half-torn door that he entered through.
"If villagers were here, that means there is a village nearby. We must hurry, if we hope to acquire food and a change of clothes. Perhaps with a stroke of luck, they will have yet to be attacked." Nate said as he began to pick up his pace a bit.
"Or, they were running from something and trying to seek refuge here." Christoff retorted.
Had that been true, then they were already far too late. For the sake of their survival, both of them were hoping that the village was still around or at the very least still standing.
The woodlands were starting to come to a close, they ran for about an hour as the brush had started to thin out due to people tending to that at a time.
Finally they saw the outlines of structures on the horizon as they cleared the woodline. From the distance it looked…untouched.
That was only a few of the houses, as they ventured deeper the truth came to life.
Its destroyers had been thorough. The ground still bore the scars of a massive magic bombardment so ferocious it had pounded an entire substrate of the surface to ash and vitrified rock. Walking at ground level was like traversing a plateau of volcanic glass.
Christoff ensured that his partisan had been secured to his back and bent to lift a delicate shard of wafer-thin glass shaped like the head of a spear. He turned it over in his hands, the blues of his eyes staring back at him from its reflective depths.
In the space of a breath the image changed.
Christoff dropped the shard and it shattered, breaking into an unnatural arrangement of pieces. He saw significance in the pattern, but a sudden wind scattered the pieces before he could divine its meaning.
"This…This is bad, Christoff." Nate struggled to say, his hand was trembling.
Christoff couldn't help but agree. They were surely meant to die, either to the Sorcerer King or other means.
"For once, I agree."
They stood atop a hill, ash and still burning embers flying towards them as they looked towards the village. Some houses remained intact, others were damaged. Most had been reduced to rubble or everything that was not the foundation was destroyed.
Both of the soldiers had moved forwards, ash kicking up with almost every step they took.
"Hey, I see someone!" Nate exclaimed, a smile forming on his face as he waved towards a villager who was still quite a bit aways.
Little did they know, the worst had yet to come.