"Ahhhhhhhhhh." A shrill cry broke Roan's trance. It was an ambush, he realized while watching Sol get mauled by a couple of humanoid beasts with sharp claws. He had never heard of such intelligent beasts capable of staging an ambush. But that didn't matter at the moment.
The beasts were numerous as they poured out of the forest and surrounded them. They were human size but had thick black fur covering their whole body.
Roan swung his sword catching one which was trying to attack Lela who was beside him while she was shooting arrows at the monsters coming from the front.
"Ahh." He cried, sharp pain in his back causing him to be disoriented. He swiftly turned around to see another monster swinging its sharp claws at him. He met the hand with his sword and managed to chop it off and stabbed the sword squarely in its chest. It tried to take a swipe at him as it lost its breath but roam remained at a safe distance leaving the sword sticking out of its body.
Roan retrieved the sword after the monster fell to the ground and surveyed his surroundings. George and Sol were dead on the ground, their stomach cut open. Seth was fighting two of the monsters while shielding Lela who was shooting arrows wildly at the monsters emerging from the forest. They seemed endless, one after another.
"We can't survive this." He thought staring at the overwhelming number of the beasts. But he couldn't give up. He shook the depressing thoughts and rushed into the fray and attacked madly at the beasts without a care for anything else. Their fight continued for some time. Fatigue set in as the number of beasts dwindled. No more were emerging from the forest. But there were still some left.
"We can do this," Seth shouted to motivate Roan and Lela while his hand never stopped hacking at their foes. There were only six of those monsters left when something happened.
Twigs snapped as the branches parted to reveal another group of the same beasts. The group waltzed in and joined the fray.
First, it was Seth who was already too fatigued to even try to defend himself. He fell.
The monsters didn't leave him alone on the ground tearing him limb from limb as the remaining ones came after Roan and Lela.
Lela fell not long after, arrows on her quiver finished before the number of living monsters.
Roan watched in muted horror as he hacked and slashed at the monsters crowding around. His heart felt hollow all of a sudden and there was nothing but pure rage in his mind. He only saw red as he witnessed a sight that he would never forget for all his life.
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"Do you think he is dead?"
"No look his chest is moving slightly."
"Yes. it seems to be moving....and I can feel his breath too.....what do we do? we can't just leave him here in the midst of... whatever this is."
"Let's just carry him to the back of the cart. Then, we'll see if we can wake him up."
"Ok"
"Agh..what did this kid eat growing up to weigh this much?"
Moans and grunts were the sublime sound Roan woke up to. It was strange. He felt strange. Roan tried to open his eyes but they almost seemed to be glued shut by some very strong adhesive. His eyelids were not working in his favour. That much was clear.
"Ahh" Roan groaned, jolted awake and drowsiness partially cleared by the sharp pain being transmitted through his back. It was as if he had just been thrown to the floor. It was too much for him to handle. He succumbed to the pain as the drowsiness returned.
But as the pain receded, another sensation crept upon his back. It was cold. His body, which he seemed to have no control over shivered, chills running up his spine.
The drowsiness which seemed to come and go as it pleased, completely vanished thanks to the chilling cold. It snatched his mind right from the clutches of unconsciousness and brought it back to reality.
"Is he awake? "Roan heard a voice question, the sound grating to his ears as if two stones were being ground into each other right next to his ears.
He tried to ignore the pain in his ears and tried to open his eyes. But before he could even try to lift his abnormally heavy eyelids, another voice talked, "Yes he seems to be. His eyes are fluttering. which I heard only happens when someone Is awake."
Roon ground his teeth together, the irritation from the voices becoming too much for his sensitive ear to bear. He tried to ignore his shivering body and the grating voices to do something that he had been trying to do since regaining consciousness, open his eyes.
His eyelids fluttered as they cracked open, filtering in bright light and causing Roan's pupils to dilate. He blinked a couple of times giving his eyes some time to adjust to the light.
And as if to celebrate his grand achievement of finally being able to open his eyes, roan's bodily senses returned.
Dry mouth parched from thirst and aches all over the body were the first problems to greet his mind, followed by the growling stomach which felt like it wasn't even there. But the most important problem was muddled memory- Roon didn't know where he was and how he got here. It was a dreadful realization.
His bleary eyes abruptly opened, the crisis of his muddled memory overpowering his drowsiness. He sat up as he took in the details of his surroundings through his blurry vision. He seemed to be in some kind of a wooden cart, half filled with wooden boxes. He was laying beside those boxes, on the very end of the cart surrounded by two men, probably the owners of the voices haunting his ears.
There were two of them, one a middle-aged man and another,а younger guy, probably around mid-twenties. And they were staring at him. Roan blankly stared back, his mind not really at the present.
While his mind was not conscious, his body understood what it needed the most. And no, it wasn't the answer for his muddled brain to clear up. It was much more important.
"Water" Roan croaked through his dry throat, His blank stare never leaving the men standing before him.
"Bring him some water, "The older man said, nudging the younger guy with his elbow, his eyes still trained on Roan, who was now shaking his head to clear up his mind.
The younger guy climbed down the cart, leaving Roan and the middle-aged man in the back of the cart. Roon kept shaking his head and blinking trying to remove the blurriness of his vision. His antics continued for some time until the man who had gone to fetch water returned and shoved a Leather pouch saying," Here drink this"
Roan grabbed the puch with shaky hands and widened its opening. he took a couple of deep swigs, his dry mouth rejoicing as the cool water travelled through his mouth to his stomach. The quenched thirst made way for a clear mind as his eyes seemed to see things better than before after some time. He tried to remember how he got here.
He remembered he had been on a mission with his friends and a couple of other new guys. It was about killing boars.
"What's your name, my friend?"The guy who had brought him water asked Roan as he stood beside his companion. Roans pondering interrupted, he turned towards the men. He passed the water poch back to the younger guy and replied," Roan."
'we were just returning from the mission and then.... monsters." roan recollected, his eyes widening as he came to a realization.
"Ah, Roan...can you tell us-"the man's question was cut short as Roan suddenly stood up and climbed down the cart, his expression a mixture of panic and fear as if he had remembered something dreadful.
"Please be alive," he muttered to himself as he clambered down the cart, his breathing getting heavier by the second and jolts of pain torturing him from all over his body.
Roan stood at what appeared to be a battlefield albeit a small one but still a battlefield with dozens of corpses of humans and other creatures strewn on the ground beside the road.
Rotting stench slammed into the Roan, overloading his sense of smell. But Roan wasn't fazed by it as his entire focus was on searching for something as he frantically ran around the field of rotting carcasses.
His search bore fruit and he found what he was looking for, his friends. Nothing more than rotting corpses but still his friends.
His frantic running abruptly stopped and he silently stood there, staring at the remains of his friends, laying on the ground. They were near unrecognisable but Roan recognised the clothes.
His face, blank just like his mind, Roan took two silent steps and fell to his knees in front of his friend's body.
"Why?" He whispered his face slowly crumbling down, twisted in agony, tears streaming down his face.
The two men who had followed Roan stood at the edge of the road and watched as Roan wept.
"Do we do something?"The younger man asked.
"No, let him be."
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"My name is Zek and he is Alvis, my younger brother."The man with a long beard and even longer hair introduced himself and pointed at his companion standing beside him who was a clean-shaven and young-looking guy with sharp features. He was a pretty handsome guy with defined cheekbones and blue eyes.
Roan nodded, his gaze never leaving the graves before which the three men were standing. His face was blank and streaks of tear stains marred his young face.
"I'm sorry for your loss, roan."Alvis sighed as he put his hand on Roan's soldier.
Roan again broke down. He covered his face with his hands, his head bowed and tears streaming down his face.
"It wasn't supposed to happen."Roan sobbed his voice hoarse from all the crying he had done in the past hour. He was heartbroken after losing the friends that he had grown up with and considered the family that he never had. But after some or rather a lot of consolations from the two brothers and after an hour of mourning, Roan had finally reluctantly decided to bury his friends just like they wanted to be buried, at the same place where they had fallen to prove that they were real adventurers.
"Can you tell us what happened here?"Alvis asked in a small voice almost a whisper in an attempt to soothe Roan. He waited patiently as Roan sniffed and sobbed. A couple of seconds later, Roan tore his eyes away from the graves and turned towards Alvis.
"We were on a mission posted at the adventurer's guild on Tolaga...It was about killing some boars..we took the mission and when we were returning from the mission...These monsters ambushed us and we fought.....I saw Seth and Lela being killed and then...then...I don't remember what happened after that."Rann explained, his hoarse voice breaking down several times in the middle of talking. His glare which was directed towards the corpses of the monsters quickly turned into a confused one as he neared his explanation.
"You don't remember what happened after that?" zek asked while stroking his beard with a thoughtful expression on his face as he stared at the corpses.
"Huh...no, I don't. I don't know what happened."Roan shook his head with a tired expression on his face. He was lost and confused, his mind unable to comprehend what was happening and why it was happening. He kept shaking his head as he walked towards the graves, his mind filled with the thought of his friends and their lifeless bodies. They used to be best of friends, inseparable and like a family but now they were gone.
"Why?" Roan questioned no one in particular, his emotions chaotic and his mind more of a mess.
While Roan was embroiled in his thoughts, zek examined every corpse closely hoping to find some clues to understand what had transpired here. Zek narrowed his eyes as he stared at a couple of humanoid-looking corpses which were different from the others. They looked more human."These two look like human corpses, roan. Were there others with you?" zek turned his head towards Roan whose eyes were still glued to his friend's graves.
"Yes. we had some new temporary members but... I didn't know them personally."
"Oh.ok.then let's what these beasts are." zek nodded and ignored the two corpses and turned his attention towards the others.
The two of them, Alvis and Zek crept closer to the corpses to get a better look at what appeared to be a four-limbed monkey-like creature. Its hand was disproportionately longer than its legs and the head was also too big compared to the body. Its skin and flesh had rotted and turned into a black gooey substance barely clinging to the bones.
"I haven't seen this kind of beast before. could they have come from deep Mervielle?" Alvis asked pinching his nose to block the stench coming from the corpses.
"I don't know where the beasts came from but I think I know how they turned into this." zek flourished his hands towards the rotting heaps of black goo.
"How?" Alvis and Roan asked at the same time both throwing questioning looks towards Zek.
Zek cleared his throat and asked a question instead, "Have you ever heard of necromancer?"
"Yes. And can you just get on with the explanation and stop acting mysterious?" Alvis replied irritation colouring his voice while Roan just blankly stared at the duo.
"Necromancers are a type of magus who deals with the element death. They use the death ether produced by a corpse and use it to raise a dead body as an undead like a zombie. you should have heard of zombies too right?"
"Yes. I've heard."
"I'm not talking to you, Alvis. shut up...Ahem..now, where was I....Ah.you see, the necromancer raises undead, right and undead require death ether to stay alive. And an undead doesn't have some infinite supply of ether, so it will deplete the supply of ether someday...It is inevitable and when it does, it turns into that kind of stuff. that gooey stuff." zek finished his explanation as he pointed at the corpse of the monkey-like creature.
"So, you mean to say a necromancer came in when I fainted, killed all these beasts, raised them as undead and then again ...killed them, "Roan said with a questioning tone in his voice, his eyes puffed staring at Zek waiting for an answer.
"No. Let me ask you a question.do you remember killing any of the beasts before you fainted, roan?"
"Yes,.....we killed a lot of them."
"So, then. I think what happened was a necromancer came in when you fainted and raised the dead bodies of the beasts you killed and sadly your friend's bodies too which he used to kill the beasts." zek continued his explanation and scooted closer to one of the beast's corpse which was probably the most intact one and pointed at the flayed rotting corpses with bite marks on it." you see these bite marks here on the flesh...It was probably done by the undead created from this beast's kin....and you probably don't know but death ether corrodes things that's why even the ones which were not turned into an undead are so rotten. It's because of the death ether that infected the bite wounds from the zombies."
"That's why they are so rotten...but that begs a question... Why did the necromancer leave Roan alone and didn't kill him and what was his motivation here?" Alvis said as he stroked his chin mimicking his older brother, pondering upon the mysteries of the encounter.
"Well, don't ask me." Zek replied with a smile, amused by his brother's antics as he walked away from the array of corpses." Say your goodbyes roan. we'll head out in half an hour."