Yukio Shinazugawa
Part of me always wished for some kind of adventure when I was small, but seeing what had happened to my family changed my views on life completely. I wanted nothing but peace after I realized what my dad's job was.
I remember coming home from school only to see my dad's bloodied suit thrown on the ground as my mom was stitching him up.
"Don't worry, dear; I just dealt with some bad people."
His words stayed with me since. He didn't even try to hide it. He straight up told me. He told his middle school daughter he was beating up people. That was the moment I began doubting my life; I just wanted to be happy with my family and friends, to grow up as a normal girl, fall in love, have friends, get married, have children, and enjoy life with people I care about. But that vision seemed impossible when we moved to the US. I was stuck in a foreign land with no one. My mom and dad were always fighting, so I could not even talk to them. and that was before I shot my dad... my mom's face was still haunting me every minute, the disappointment, regret, and even some fear as she looked at me like I was some type of monster.
Getting pulled into this cave was a dangerous encounter that allowed me to shift my focus on getting out of it. But now that we were deep in the woods, my guilt was returning, crawling underneath my skin and getting rid of my sanity bit by bit.
"we should be close" Alex snapped me out of my concerns.
Awoken from my thoughts, I looked around. We were in the middle of gigantic, red-leafed trees. We had been walking for 2 hours since we escaped the cave; we were following faint white smoke we saw in the distance. Smoke meant fire; we had hoped we would find some kind of civilization.
"Do you think they would be friendly?" I asked Alex with concern.
"They want to be found; normal fire rarely has white smoke; besides, you don't put a gigantic smoke signal in the middle of the woods if you're hiding or don't want visitors. So unless this is a trap set up for people, we should be fine; regardless, let's be cautious," Alex replied in a serious tone.
"How do you know all of this?" I asked in amazement; we had been walking for 2 hours, and Alex had been a completely different person, or rather I was seeing the real him for the first time. he was incredible, knew every detail of surviving in the forest, knew how to tell directions, or at least if same physics applied to this world. knew how to catch fish in the nearby river with his bare hands! even knew what kind of animal tracks we had passed.
"I've been playing survival games and watching a lot of shows basically my whole life," he patted the back of his head.
"what's even funny is I have imagined what it would be like being stuck alone in a deserted island and stuff like that,who knew it would come in handy" he admitted embarassingly.
"I—I see," I replied while becoming more curious regarding survival programs. "Do they teach stuff like that?" I wondered to myself as we approached the end of the red trees.
Walking at the edge of the trees, we saw remains of a small carriage burnt completely on the what looked like a dirt trail that was used as a road. the carriage was completely gone. As we approached, we saw the remains of a person burned alongside it. or rather in it.
"What a horrible way to go," I whispered to myself.
"Whoever it was, it does not look like they died from fire; look at the skull," Alex pointed at the remains of a skull that I purposely avoided before.
There was a large gash on the side of the skull; it was not wide either, but big enough to kill anyone.
"Looks like something thin, like a knife or rather a sword," Alex said, inspecting the skull.
"Then he was killed, or robbed." I readied my bow.
"We are not alone here," Alex looked around with caution. "And whoever did this left the carriage to burn alongside them. If they were some bandits, they would take the carriage with them; besides, they have horses and at least one carriage," Alex gestured at dirt tracks on the road.
"Let's continue in this direction; be on guard." I nodded at Alex as we continued following the dirty road towards the smoke.
After walking for 20 more minutes, we approached a small village, at least what looked like it used to be one before this. There were a couple of small wooden houses, almost burnt to the foundations; there were bodies everywhere, every single one of them decapitated. They wore the same type of armor we saw on elves in the caves.
"What is this?" I looked around, barely holding myself back from throwing up. "What kind of monsters do this?"
"I don't think any monster just decapitates people and doesn't eat the rest. They were raided, probably by people." Alex looked around in disgust.
"Grab what we can; we can't stay here; whoever did this might come back." Alex patted me on the shoulder and began inspecting bodies for anything useful.
"Give me a minute," I replied, walking between 2 houses and throwing what felt like my guts out.
from the smell, it had to be a day or two; bodies had just started rotting, flies buzzing everywhere as the village was mostly burnt, with hints of fire here and there, emitting white smoke.
Finally fixing myself up and preparing mentally, I started to search corpses; they were just normal people. Most of them did not have a physique or armor to be fighters, some of them females, wearing nothing but green-white dresses, with no weapons nor armor around them. just beheaded, cut in half, or pierced by arrows or other weapons.
searching couple bodies I stumbled around a house that was still standing; the roof was gone, but the rest seemed fine. I opened the door as I walked inside. Everything was burnt inside; there was part of a table with chairs half burned, and remains of paper books were scattered all over as I grabbed some of the papers and noticed familiar language.
"JAPANESE!" I almost screamed, clutching the half-burnt pages. It was not much, but I had something that reminded me of my home. The book was mostly torn, and it told the story of an elven princess that had formed the village called "Edun" in the forest, alongside humans of foreign lands. The book also mentioned how she was the first ever "contractor of Undine.".
"crack." I slightly jumped as the pot fell on the floor and broke; the wind was starting to pick up as the fire subsided. i continued looking around in this half burned house as I walked in the what used to be bedroom my stomach fell. it was a sight that no human especially girl should ever look at, it was a sight marking ultimate savagery, a sight that rolled tears from my eyes as I thought what had happened here. a small corpse of a beheaded lady lay on the half-burnt bed naked. with all of her limbs tied to the frames of a bed. Her body had both burns and cuts all around it, marked with dried blood and bruises.
"What is this... am I in hell?" I asked myself as I turned my head down, bloating my eyes out crying.
"Yukio!" a call from Alex startled me as I rushed out from this horrible room, not wanting to look back or even remember what sight I had seen.
"What is it?" I rushed outside, seeing Alex standing in the middle of the street holding a piece of paper.
"Can you read this? part of it looks like Japanese" Alex held out a piece of paper that was almost completely ripped in half and stained with blood.
"Where did you get this?" I said trying to grab paper
"It was nailed to a person's head," Alex replied with a serious tone, pulling away the paper from my hands.
The second part is Japanese; it says, "Death to filthy nonbelievers, glory to Mordathar!" The first part might be the same in a different language," I replied.
"Figured it was something similar; let's go! Maybe we can do or at least learn something; this looks like the extermination or rather enslaving process of Elves." Alex started running lightly as we followed the tracks of a carriage on the wet road.
"Maybe some of them were humans; we don't know that only Elves use that green armor," I asked Alex.
"there were...heads...on stakes in the center of the village; all of them were Elves...even the guy this paper was nailed to," Alex replied, looking forward with determination.
"Oh god... but if we follow the road, we might find whoever did this. What then?" I asked worriedly.
"Did you see any small bodies?" Alex stopped and looked at me.
"n-no," I replied.
"I think they kidnapped children and killed all of the adults...we can't just not do anything if we can.besides I doubt they would make their best forces wait for slow carridges, not with the dirty road, let's catch up to them for now and see what is what" Alex replied.
"Please let there be 2-3 weak guys or something." I voiced my wishes while we continued to run after the dirty tracks.