"Are you okay to stand yet?" I asked Teresa as I held my hand out to help her to her feet.
"Yeah, it'll take a lot more than almost choking to death on my own blood to keep me down," she said and took my hand.
After helping her to her feet I looked at the area around us. The number of bodies scattered around was insane.
"So am I right in thinking that either this thing was dragging its food to this spot, or this cave got an unusually high amount of traffic," I said to the others.
"No, I was wondering that as well, but come here, I think I found something," Bella responded.
She was kneeling in the spot where the child was sleeping.
"What does that look like to you," she said when Teresa and I walked over to her.
It took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at until I realized it was a human hand. It was partially buried, so we could only see part of a decayed finger. What must have caught Bella's attention was the shiny, metallic speck on top of it.
"What is that, silver?" Teresa asked and leaned in closer.
"Back away, so I can try and clear it," Bella said.
We backed away and she cast a spell that caused a small cyclone to touch down on the area. She used her staff to guide the cyclone. It removed the dirt and uncovered the hidden remains. The body was dressed in the tattered remains of a nightshirt. It was also missing its head, most of its abdomen and an arm. To most people this body would probably be unidentifiable, but the hand told me exactly who it was. The shiny speck was a silver ring. The same silver ring I remember staring at the night I fled this village all those years ago.
"That's Conlin Sr," I said as I stared at the corpse.
"How can you tell?" Teresa asked me.
"It's that big, arrogant ring. He never took it off," I said and stood up.
"Okay, so if this is him, then why does everyone think he ran off?" Teresa asked and shook her head.
"Yeah, and he was buried, everyone else here was just left to rot where they landed. What makes him so different?" Bella asked.
"Well, when we combine those questions with the ones we had about the monster and the spirit, we end up with a lot of questions that won't get answered from here. So Bella, how do we clean the water at least?" I asked.
I was in a strange place, part of me felt sorry for Conlin Sr. The other, larger part of me felt like he got what he deserved. It made me want to smile, but that feeling made me feel like a bad person. He did wrong me, but did he really deserve to be mauled in a cave and left to rot?
"So, all we need to do is get rid of these corpses. They're poisoning the water," Bella said.
"You don't expect us to dig all of them out, do you?" Teresa asked. It was clear that she was not on board with any plan that involved her moving these bodies by hand.
"No, you lazy oaf. I have a different idea," Bella said and gestured for me to come over to her.
I followed her to the edge of the water.
"Okay Simeon, dip your sword in the water and don't let go of it until I tell you to," she said to me.
I did as she instructed and held my sword in my left hand so that its blade was partially submerged in the river water. Next, she took my right hand in her hands and closed her eyes.
"Are you ready," she asked, checking on me one last time.
"Yeah, I won't let the sword go," I said nonchalantly. I probably should have taken her caution more seriously.
"Okay, Gaia's Blessing," Bella said and gripped my hand.
Once she called out the spell, my sword began to glow again. This time however it also began to heat up. My hand began to sizzle as the heat intensified. I heard myself screaming as I did my best to keep my hand on the red-hot sword. On the other side of me, Bella was gathering energy from the world around us. She was then passing the energy through me into the sword and the sword was using that energy to clean the water. I only knew this because of the ripples of blue light emanating from the blade of my sword. After several excruciatingly painful seconds Bella let go of my hand. I immediately began falling backwards.
"I got you love," Teresa said as she caught me.
Bella cupped some of the water in her hands and splashed it onto my charred hand. The handle of the sword had fused with my hand. As the water ran down my hand, the skin healed, and removed the sword from itself.
I glared at Bella as I rubbed the palm of my hand. It no longer hurt, but I still remembered the feeling.
"That should get rid of everything contaminating the water in a few minutes," Bella said.
"So, we're done here?" Teresa asked. There was a certain happiness in her voice that made me wonder how much of a toll this battle had taken on her.
"Yeah, now we just need to make enough health potions to heal all the sick people, and figure out what the hell caused all of this trouble in the first place, " Bella said.
I looked at the place where Conlin Sr. was buried and found nothing but his ring lying where his sad corpse used to. I wanted to leave it in the cave, but I decided that it was best to take the ring with us.
"So where are we going first?" Teresa asked as we made our way back through the cave.
The mushrooms and brown sludge had been completely removed from the water. The odor was also gone. The water finally seemed safe to drink once again.
"I think we should split up. I need to go and start working on those potions and you two need to go and actually talk to the governor of this place," Bella said.
"Aww but I wanna meet love's parents," Teresa pouted and folded her arms over her chest.
"You're not missing much. He has a pervy father, and a mother, that frankly is too good for the both of them," Bella said.
"Sis, i gotta say, for someone with a body as amazing as yours, you sure don't like it when people notice it," Teresa said and shielded her eyes from the light as we stepped out of the cave.
"They can notice anything they want, I just don't need to know how they feel about what they see," Bella responded.
"Well I agree with you we should split up. That way we can take care of the people and try to find more answers," I said.
We never got the chance to split up. As we made our way back down the river toward the village, we heard someone screaming.
"Someone sounds pissed," Teresa said with a raised eyebrow.
"It's probably coming from that huge group of people in front of us,"Bella said.
Ahead of us, dozens of people were walking up the river directly toward the three of us. Leading the pack was a red-faced Conlin Jr.
"What the hell did you do?" he yelled at us before he was even close enough to hear our response.