Suddenly, it was all too much for Kat, and she began to cry tremendous choking sobs as her tears streamed down her soot-smeared face.
"What was that, Elysia?" asked the harsh voice from somewhere nearby.
Kat choked back sobs as stealthy footsteps approached. Something blotted out the sunlight streaming into her hiding place, and she looked up at the face of a girl framed by long black hair and wearing a pair of cat ears, who stared back at her with eyes with vertical pupils which, Unlike the evil eyes of a beastman, they reflected nervousness, weariness, and for some reason, disappointment. Kat found herself staring at the sharp point of a long sword, the blade etched with faint marks.
"Come out slowly" said the unknown girl, whose soft and educated voice was then cold and without a trace of mercy.
Kat crawled out into the daylight, realizing that she was near death at the time.
She stood up and saw that the girl was much taller than her and was dressed like a bandit. A faded wool cloak was thrown back to free her right arm and shoulder, where she handled the gun. Her clothes were stained, patched, and travel-worn, and her tall leather boots were cracked and scuffed. The girl looked around her with a nervous wariness, which seemed usual for her.
"She's just a girl," she yelled over her shoulder. "Perhaps a survivor."
The figure that lumbered into view beyond Mr. Hof's bakery was, in its own way, as terrible as the beasts had been. He was a Nord, but one who bore little resemblance to the merchants she had met at the inn.
His height was enormous, he was the tallest man Kat had ever seen, the bandit girl barely reached her chest; The Norseman was very stocky, perhaps as stocky as Jan the blacksmith had been, and certainly more muscular. With a hand as big as a ham, he held the largest sword she Kat had ever seen. His body was covered in an imposing armor of black plates edged with silver at the joints; Unlike the demon-like black armor of the woman he had seen the night before, the Norseman's black armor gave him an aura only a champion could boast.
What Kat had before her was, a legend, a being taken from a myth, the protagonist of a story, a dark hero.
The dark hero gave him a fierce belligerent look. His person was surrounded by an aura of barely contained power, which was desperately frightening, and he did not manifest the fear that was evident in her mate.
"What happened here, girl?" she demanded sharply, and her voice sounded like two stones had been rubbed against each other.
Looking at the slit in the helm where the dark hero's eyes were presumably located, she watched as an inhuman red flash was released. Kat couldn't think of a reply, and the catgirl touched her shoulder gently.
"What's your name?" she inquired in a kinder tone.
"Kat. katherine. It was the beasts. They came out of the forest and killed them all. I hid, and they left me alone."
Kat found herself babbling the story of her encounter with the beastmen and the woman in black armor to the utter amazement of the two adventurers. The moment she finished, the dark hero gave her a weary look. Her intimidating posture had softened a bit.
"Do not worry child. You are safe now." I declare the dark hero.
♦ ♦ ♦
"I don't like these trees." Frei said. "They make me want to take them down with sword strikes."
Nervously, Elysia looked into the shadowy forest. On all sides they were surrounded by huge melancholy trees, ominous presences, whose branches joined at the top of the path, entwined like the fingers of a giant in prayer; they blotted out the sun to such an extent that only a single shaft of light illuminated the path before them. Moss covered the branches, and the scaly bark on the trunks resembled the dried skins of dead snakes. There was a stillness as old as the primeval forest around them, broken only by sporadic movement in the bushes. The sound spread through the silence until it faded as mysteriously as ripples on the surface of a lake, and here, in the ancient and evil heart of the forest, not a bird dared to sing.
Elysia was forced to admit that she agreed with Frey, that she had never really liked the woods, that these forest lands were frightening places for her, home to beastmen, trolls, and nightmarish creatures from the darkest legends, in addition to the place to which those who had the mark of darkness were banished. Deep inside her, she had always imagined werewolves and witches dwelling, and fierce fights between mutants and other followers of the Evil Powers.
Up ahead, Frey jumped over a log that had fallen across the path, then turned to help Kat climb over it and lifted the girl easily with one hand.
Elysia stopped before the obstacle seeing that she was rotten and stained by a strange fungus. Segmented insects scuttled across the surface, blindly burrowing into the foul-smelling mold. Catgirl shivered at the feel of the wet wood as she placed her hand on the log to jump. As her boots nearly slipped on the damp moss on the other side, she had to reach out to keep her balance, and as she did so, she touched her fingers to a spider web that stretched between the lower branches; she quickly withdrew her hand and tried to brush the sticky substance from her skin.
No, Elysia had never liked the woods. She had hated the summers when her owner's family retired to their manor house in the woods, and she had loathed the pine-walled house surrounded by the forest land from which the raw material for the wood-making business was derived. cars and boats that the owner's family had. During the day she wasn't too terrible if she didn't stray too far from the buildings, but at night her ever-overactive mind populated even the open farmland with monstrous denizens; the goblins and demons of her mental creations found a perfect home under the swaying branches of the trees.
She both envied and pitied the fur-clad lumberjacks who tended the estate. She envied her bravery because she saw them almost as heroes facing the terrors of an untamed land, and she pitied them for having to live constantly on guard. It had always seemed to her that anyone who had to dwell in a settlement situated within the forest lived in the most precarious environment she could imagine.
She remembered that she used to go to the window of her room and look at the greenery that she imagined stretched out to the very end of the world, to those wastelands where the loathsome followers of the dark gods roamed. The strange noises and the clouds of fluttering moths attracted by the lights in the house did nothing to lessen her concern. She was a city slave, an urban scion for whom getting lost in the woods was a nightmare, a recurring one on those long nights.
Elysia stopped in her tracks and sniffed the air, then glanced at Frey, who tilted his head questioningly. The cat girl gestured for her to be quiet, causing Frey to frown as if he was concentrating to better perceive a distant sound.
Frey knew that the catgirl's senses of hearing and smell were better than his, and he waited expectantly, but Elysia shook her head and started off again. Elysia was noticeably nervous, that was obvious.
What they had seen that morning justified anyone's fear, since it indicated that these forests harbored powerful enemies of humanity, and Kat's account confirmed it. Elysia looked down at her hands and saw that they were shaking.
Elysia considered herself a strong woman, but what she had witnessed in the fallen city was enough to make even the strongest tremble.
Something had ravaged Kleinsdorf like an angry giant would an ant mound, and the little town had been ravaged with terrifying malevolence and thoroughness. Not a single building had been left untouched by the attackers, and none of the inhabitants had survived except Kat. The sheer senseless brutality had stunned her.
In that place she had seen things that she knew she would see again in her nightmares. A bonfire raised in the town square, on which skulls were piled; charred ribs, sticking out of the hot ash like unconsumed branches. A sickening smell of burning meat had filled her nose, and she had tried not to lick her lips for fear they might contain windblown ashes.
She had been left stunned in the silence and desolation of the ruined city, where everything around her was ash gray or sooty black, except for the few fires still burning here and there. She had jumped in alarm when the roof had collapsed on the devastated town wall, something that had seemed like a grim omen. She felt like a tiny atom of life in an endless desert. Slowly, in small fractions, her memory of that moment had carved itself into his memory.
High on the hill stood the castle, its fire-blackened walls like a stone spider clinging to the summit with withered rock feet. At the opening left by the shattered door, men dangled on the ends of ropes like flies caught in a single-stranded web. The village below seemed like the playground of demonic children, giant idiots who had grown bored with their toy town and reduced it to splinters.
The street was strewn with small objects, like a broken pitchfork whose teeth were smeared with dried blood; a bell that was half melted among the ruins of a crumbling temple; a child's rattle and a smashed crib; some printed pages of an Unfinished Book floating in the breeze; traces of bodies dragged through the dirt of the streets that led to the central bonfire; a beautiful dyed dress, that nobody would wear anymore, thrown in the street; a human femur that someone had split open to suck out the marrow.
The catgirl had seen the effects of violence before, but never on such a colossal scale and never in such senseless stupidity. Even the carnage at Fort Von Deyl had been due to a battle waged by forces with specific reasons. However, what she saw before her was a massacre; she had heard of such things, but facing the stark reality was a very different thing. Making sure such things really happened, she had scared her. How could any of the gods allow such a thing?
She was also unsettled by the fact that Kat had survived. Looking at the girl walking before him with slumped shoulders, filthy hair, and soot-stained clothing, he wondered how her life could have been spared. That didn't make any sense either; Why had she alone of all the inhabitants of that sleepy community saved her life?
Was she a corrupt offspring, a slave to the Darkness leading them to their deaths? Were she and Frey escorting an evil being to the next set of victims? In a normal situation, she would have dismissed such a thought as utterly ridiculous; it was obvious that she was just a frightened child, that she had had the good fortune to survive when others had died.
Yet here, in the gloom of the deep forest, it was easy to entertain such suspicions. The stillness and silence of the environment affected the nerves, and engendered mistrust of strangers.
Only the dark hero seemed unperturbed; he walked boldly while avoiding the roots that clung to the trees and that emerged threatening to trip him, while his comfortable walk devoured kilometers.
Frey moved with extraordinary stealth for someone so stocky and stocky; somehow, he gave the impression that he was in his element among the shadows of the forest, for he seemed taller and sharper. In no case did he stop; instead, Elysia stopped to look at the undergrowth whenever she heard movement or detected a strange smell. Frey seemed quite confident in his ability to stand against any threat.
The catgirl sighed as she recalled the arguments she had had to use to prevent Frey from further investigating the remains of the city. At least the girl had provided a useful excuse to move on and find a safe place to find shelter for herself. It had been that and the possibility that the creatures were on their way to the next town that had convinced Frey.
Elysia stopped, obeying some hidden instinct, and completely still, she strained her ears to hear anything that was out of the ordinary. She, perhaps, was nothing more than her imagination, but it seemed to her that the very stillness of the forest constituted a threat. She hinted at the presence of ancient evil beings waiting for the opportune moment, waiting for their victims. In those long shadows she could stalk anything, and she knew something was watching them.
She was starting to cool down. A slight darkening of the gloomy surroundings indicated that night was falling on the bed of leaves, and catgirl turned to look over her shoulder, afraid of silence, but even more so of sounds that indicated pursuit. When she looked ahead again, Frey and Kat had disappeared around a bend in the path. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, and she hurried to catch up.