'Neighihihihi…hihhihihi'
The sound of a horse could be heard across the forest as it was being halted by its rider with the intent to stop and examine the area.
"Let's start here!"
The squad, at the command of their leader, halted their horses as well.
It was a small group, a squad of the Sohei of the Monkogon temple.
They had been assigned a mission outside the walls to track the location where the Mages had made an appearance and launched their first attack to see if they could find any leads on where the Mages were hiding.
Unlike the monks who had a visible and known dwelling place, the mages, up until this point had not been traceable.
The monks weren't aware of where their top authorities met and the mages couldn't be said to have a kingdom in terms of physical structure.
They were mostly wanderers.
Before the building of the wall many decades ago, the monks had always had a big problem defending themselves from the mages because while they stayed in a particular location, the mages were everywhere.
It was for this reason their ancestors decided to build the wall.
The building process, which was already supposed to be a long one was tens of times longer than it was meant to be because the mages were constantly attacking as much as possible, to prevent the monks from finishing the wall of protection.
When the wall was eventually built, the pestering was reduced, and the time of the rest of the monks began.
The current squad had been on patrol for about 2 hours tracking the location.
They were following the path that Squad 18 had followed for the mission.
They were 9 in number, led by Roger Mr. Arasaki's friend.
The head of the North army in Monkogon had asked for assistance on the particular mission.
The inhabitants of the whole temple had been put in a mood as a result of the current wearisome happenings at the time.
As planned, the council had started taking measures and deploying the army in preparation for war against the mages.
Mr. Arasaki had been assigned a small team of elite high-ranking Sohei to carry out a secret undercover mission of finding out and exploiting the roots of the base of the mages and feeding the temple back with information on how to completely wipe them out.
The council was intending to make their attack fast and unprecedented.
Roger had also been assigned to be in charge of the reconnaissance mission to get them ahead on leads.
The whole squad alighted their horses and at the sign of their commander, they began to move around the area in groups of two.
While Roger's men were searching the area he stood and looked around.
He was carrying a sword on his back, the sheath hanging upright, supported by a belt worn across, all the way to the front and locked in place.
The sword was relatively large, having a length of 100 centimeters and a width of 15 centimeters.
He wore metal sheets of armor on both shoulders, his chest, and back, and at the front of his legs, hanging from his waist region like a skirt, and also at his rear.
Roger had seen something that drew his attention.
He walked forward towards something strange on the ground about three meters away from his position.
It looked like a strange mark or so.
He wasn't sure anything was there as what he thought he was seeing was vague.
He fixed his gaze on the ground as he walked carefully towards the strange vague mark.
As he approached the point, all he could see was just grass and dirt.
He continued with his men to search around for the next few minutes.
After they couldn't discover anything of relevance in the area Roger ordered them to converge.
As Roger was walking forward he instinctively turned his head swiftly towards the right with his eyes at the farthest possible angle in its socket in the same direction.
Almost immediately, a shadowy figure slipped behind the trees.
He stared a little bit and turned, continuing forward.
It seemed he hadn't seen anything.
The squad mounted their horses and continued their journey into the forest.
****************
The area was so silent you could hear the breathing of a human.
The wide expanse was deserted by living beings, of course, because of what it was meant for. All except one.
A cold east wind suddenly blew across the area in its bold grandeur.
The advection of the wind left a chilling feeling on the skin of its prey as the little boy knelt in front of the stone with the inscription of his mother's name on it.
His pale face was bent down towards the ground.
A tear that had been gathering up in his eyes finally left off.
As it fell from his eyes, from the side view, it sparkled in the golden light of the brilliant sunset until it finally got low enough, caught up in the shadows of whatnot around, and was left on the ground with a slight 'split' sound.
He raised his head and looked at the stone one more time.
The presence of traces of dried tears on his face was proof that he had been crying for a long while.
Probably as a result of thoughts evoking emotions, a last batch of tears was forced out of his eyeballs before they could be finally satisfied for a while.
His kneeling posture was preventing the free flow of blood in his legs and he had been adjusting the legs, shaking them once in a while to assist the blood in its prevented flow.
After staring at the gravestone for some more minutes, he staggered to his feet.
He found it very difficult to stand as his legs felt numb from kneeling for a long time.
Also, the weird feeling of the absence of blood flow made the standing harder until the next few seconds when they began to receive an inflow.
He rubbed his two toes together to feel for sure that his legs were having blood flow, his knees still shaking slightly, trying to adjust to the newly assumed standing posture.
After a little while, he finally was able to stand upright and waited a few more seconds before making his way toward the exit of the graveyard.
He walked a little, and as he approached the gate, a flying arrow suddenly dug into his right shoulder joint, so fast that he couldn't understand or react.
He looked at his shoulder and immediately started feeling dizzy and in about 3 seconds, fell to the ground.