Raindrops rolled down her wrinkled skin. Her grey hood was wet and her back was hunched. In her right hand, she held a staff that was made of cracked wood.
When the lightning stroke again, her face became clear to Natalia; Pacificia.
"Go behind girl," she waved with her staff.
"All is doomed," Natalia thought and her legs failed her. Her body slumped down and her hands fell into the black puddles.
Pacificia looked at her. "Can't blame you I guess," her eyes were still fixed on the blight men. "When this old bag of bones is the one trying to protect you."
By then, the people had turned frantic. Blight men – with their rotting skins and bulging eyes ran after them, and it was all chaos.
One woman ran screaming, and a blight man lunged over her. That thing – with its rotting black teeth with maggots rolling over them, tore into her neck; like a hungry hyena. It was not like how a lion or tiger hunted its prey. That thing was not hungry, that thing had no soul.
It was cancer.
People fell like cut logs, and Natalia saw their blood and guts pour out thick like black ink. One man took an axe and chopped the leg of a blight man, but it wouldn't stop moving. It gave out an angry shrill and kept crawling, chasing after the man. He kept on swinging and swinging, and then stumbled and fell. Natalia saw his face getting torn open.
"That is going to be me," Natalia's teeth clattered. She saw it look for the next prey, and then it saw her. "NO, NO, NO," she clawed her way through the dirt as if she had forgotten how to run.
Something cracked, and when she looked, Natalia saw that the monster's head had cracked under Pacificia's staff. And then, she was seeing it; what she had seen in the eyes of her mother – conviction.
"Get up, young girl," the old lady said. "You wanted to know what he was, right? Well, I can't tell you that right now. Not without you know what runs in your blood."
Pacificia waved her staff high, and she felt the air vibrate in its end. Natalia saw a sparkle in her eyes, but they didn't look what she saw in her mother.
Natalia didn't know from where it came, but when she heard a squeak, there it was; a rat, gnawing on a piece of shriveled nut. That creature seemed familiar. It looked like the one she had seen in the old lady's house.
From around her, she started to hear squeaks, shrieks, and cries. Around her, an army had started to gather.
Those small soldiers started to move, climbing over the blight men and tearing through their necks. Some of them went to the ankles and cut the achilles, and when the monsters started to crawl, they went to their eyes and nose. Rotten flesh hung from the wounds, but the monsters kept on moving. It was too much for the army of rats to handle.
Natalia had always thought the world to be bizarre. If there was only suffering in this world, why did god intend to create them in the first place? But after today and the day before, she knew that she had yet to truly see the bizarreness of the world.
"We can't dilly daily in here," Pacificia said. She sounded drained. "Up to my house, now."
But then Natalia remembered. "Mother," she said. There was no hope now, she knew that – what could her mother do, what the others that had legs can't?
And then, her house burst into flames. Screams erupted from inside, but there was none from her mother. It was as if she was taken but her gods.
Then she was running. The blight men were slow in hunting her. When they have a feast in front of them, why should they go to a scrawny little girl?
Pacificia went inside the house to find the shadow. "He is not here," Natalia heard her scream. "He is not here."
Natalia hunched and huffed and puffed. Her vision was blurry, but she saw it. She saw the shadow walking down the slope, with red squirms dancing around him. His gaze was straight, straight towards the blight men. "Pacificia," Natalia screamed.
Pacificia came running out. "What is it girl?" she was irritated, and she was hurrying. Then, her eyes followed where the girl pointed. "What the?!" her mouth became wide open.
Blight men ran towards the shadow. "Get away from there," Pacificia screamed, but the shadow didn't move. One of them, a bloated man in his previous life ran at him, swinging his bulging belly, and jumped. Its teeth went towards the shadow's shoulder, his hand raised to stop it and touched the monster's head, and then –
– it stopped. Bolts of red and black and colors Natalia didn't know ran through its body and the monster flew, rolled, and fell on his side. She couldn't see what happened, but one thing was clear; shadow gave back what was taken from that poor soul – death.
The rest of them charged at the shadow, and one by one, they fell. But even Natalia could see it, sooner or later, he is going to fall; for the blight men were plenty and he had only two hands.
Pacificia gripped her staff. She moved down the slope hoping to help the shadow. But there was only so much she could do, she was an old woman in a famine-ravaged land. Her rats followed her glowing staff and kept on dying. Corpses started to pile on the ground and more and more blight men came.
"What can I do?" Natalia wanted to run away. "What did I do today?"
She was just a scrawny little girl. She couldn't control the fire like her mother, or tame the rats like Pacificia. But her mother was bedridden and gone, and Pacificia was old. If they fought against the monsters, she felt she ought to do it too.
She looked around, hoping to find a weapon. But there wasn't any. If there was, she wouldn't have struggled against the boys in the village, the very boys that have turned to meat for the blight men. One of them ran at Pacificia from behind. Natalia picked up a rock and threw it –
– it went and hit the monster. Its focus turned towards Natalia, or maybe it was instinct, or maybe it was some twisted fate. "Run, girl," Pacificia screamed but her legs failed. The monster ran at her and she stumbled. "Please . . . mama,' she wanted to cry but her mother was no more.
The blight man's rotting face was right in front of her. "I'm going to die here," she was scared. "I'm coming to you mama," she tried to find some form of happiness in her peril.
And then she remember as if she was looking through a kaleidoscope. She saw glimpses of a past she had forgotten. She saw a man and her mother together, and they were looking at Natalia smiling. She saw him doing something in the dirt, and she saw her mother eating a fruit. "Are those peaches?" she thought. She saw her mother running with her in her arms, and she saw fire – just like how it is now. She saw how they reached here, and when her mother became bedridden. "It was all because of them," she now knew. "It was all because of the blight men."
Her finger curled and her hair rose. She remembered all the warmth her mother had given, the warmth she had forgotten – the warmth she will never have again. She saw how her mother burst into flames, trying to save her.
Flickers turned to embers and then into flames. It caught on the monster's face and it fell back. It tried to roll over the dirt, but the flames didn't stop. Natalia had opened a door and she didn't know how to close it.
The shadow and Pacificia came running to her, with the monsters following them. Natalia held her flaming hand back, "stop she screamed."
"Cut out all thoughts, girl," Pacificia shouted. She kept on fending away the blight men, with rats and her staff. All things were going against their way –
– except the sun. Dawn was breaking, and seeing the white glow of the sun, the monsters turned as if they were cockroaches. The three ran up the hill, while the blight men ran towards whatever hole they came out from. Beams of light came down and some of them, with their roasted skins, ran frantic.
Pacificia sat by her side. She was an old woman and she was tired. "We need to leave this place soon. Before night comes. Those things will come back again, for they now know the key is here. And if one of 'them' comes, there is no hope."
Natalia didn't know who 'them' were and she didn't ask. The battle was over and they were safe – for now.
But she felt something was missing from her heart then; something that she shouldn't forget.