A Long Tiresome Journey: Part 2

A few days had passed and I was about a third of the way through my trek home. The moon had risen to its highest and was beginning its travel down to the horizon. I walked steadily, deciding that this night I would continue walking due to finding out how close the next village would be if I did so. It was a choice to speed up my trip and to hopefully make it home on time before the war reached it. I could see the lanterns flickering in the distance as the village slowly came closer, and then the wind stopped, the grass lay silent, everything was still. It felt as if time had stopped yet I was still moving, a sense of unease fell upon me as I ventured ever forwards.

Then a flicker of what looked to be lightning struck down into the centre of the village, silent at first then a massive BANG! From a distance I could see a fire rapidly spread throughout the village, burning houses and catching fire to the next within seconds. I broke into a sprint as I attempted to save as many lives as I could, yet as I reached the village gate, the flames had already risen out of control. The fire flung itself across rooves latched itself to the villagers. I witnessed a young girl run out of her house screaming, her back engulfed in flames, and after being doused in water the fire on her back re-lit. Moving quickly into the village I tried my best to pull out as many survivors of the initial ignition as possible.

Every house lay devastated at the centre of the village, panicking I grabbed the nearest person I could find and dragged them all the way to the edge of the village. The smell of burning timber, hay and flesh worked its way through the air and into my lungs. I began to cough, the thick, black smoke choking me whenever I entered the village to save another. By the time the sun broke over the distant mountains, the village itself was gone. All that stood was a few wooden struts that would be blown away like sand in a soft breeze. Next to me, lay 12 injured villagers, all with serious burns, I tried my best to no avail as I offered medical aid, trying to sooth the burns with what ever I could find, and as the day passed more and more of them fell to the burns.

I ventured back into the village a few more times in hopes to find someone... anyone... yet all there was for me to see, was the burnt corpses, stuck in unusual positions as if they had become stone figures describing pain in an art garden. My heart sank, some were burnt so badly that the skin had melted off and their bones had been coated black by the flames. I thought to myself at how the most lucky villagers would've been the ones that lay in the centre as the lightning bolt hit, as at least their deaths would've been quick and painless. As I reached the village centre, I looked upon a crater where it once stood. It's centre had melted and was a cooling pit of lava, and here it was where the stench of death was strongest. My mind began to wobble as I began to gag on the air, and before I had noticed I was outside the village again. I crouched down and vomited profusely onto the singed grass on the side of the village.

It was here I noticed a small detail, the fire didn't carry on over onto the grass, nor the trees surrounding the village. It had just stopped, so I decided to follow it all the way around the village to ensure that my thought was indeed correct. As I came back to my start point, I came to a realisation that this was controlled. It was an attempt at mass extermination, or more likely a test run of something to come. I slowly moved my way back to the people I had left unattended, I knew before hand what I could do for them wasn't much and I suppose I got lucky that they couldn't speak due to the fire burning their throats. Yet as I looked at their bodies, lifeless, still, I felt pity, they were the unfortunate ones, the ones who didn't die instantly. They suffered more than anyone else, they experienced the knowing of loss for far longer than anyone in the village.

I broke down, for hours on end I sat upon the side of the road, my tears rolling for the first hour then it was almost as if they dried up. My gaze ever focused on the bodies, I had experienced death of family, death of singular people that I had no connection to, but now everything I had been through, all the death I had caused, and now the deaths of entire families. Everything piled up, the weight of their deaths on my shoulders. My legs and arms had went numb, my mind lost its resolve as I sat waiting for anything to come free me from this madness. Yet nothing came, it was if the world didn't exist anymore, as if this village was never on the map to begin with. Not even any traders passed that day.

Standing after a couple hours, my movements felt dragged, and heavy I approached the bodies with the thought of a burial for them. To let them rest in peace, yet as I stepped further forward I realised that I could never bury them all. It would take me a few days to dig the pits without any tools. So I decided at that moment that I should burn the bodies and send a letter back to the Royal Guard on this occurrence. As I crouched down next to young child's body, I could only help but stare, before trying to grab and move it over to begin a pile. Grabbing the arm and lifting it up slightly only for the arm to rip off the body. What was left of their blood squirted out of the arm and body, slowly forming a puddle under the body.

At this point I turned off my brain, and moved quickly to pile the bodies, hurrying myself so that I could quickly move on and hopefully forget these couple of days. I stacked the bodies and went to get some dry moss and leaves to use for tinder. I used what little of magic I had understood from my lesson, and tried to create a small fire on my finger. A tiny flame spurted out from the top of it, slowly setting light to the moss and then onto the leaves. I slowly planted the tinder at the bottom of the pile and watched as the bodies slowly began to smoke and then burn away.

I went and began to gather my gear, and slowly but surely continued on my way home, what was left was at least another week or two of travelling. Now I was wishing I had saved enough to by a horse.