[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XRkEDCNyUI][BACKGROUND MUSIC][/url]

The wastes are eerily silent, devoid of any noise but the gentle wind rushing against the sands, shifting the grains across the empty expanse. It is a world at peace, a far cry from the chaos and devastation that had gripped it only a day prior. The pained screams, the sound of steel against flesh, the horrific, eldritch cries of the monsters that had fought upon this stark landscape ... the pandemonium of battle is but a half-remembered dream, as if it had never truly occurred. Had it not been for the crimson blood that stained the sands, colour dulling as it dried against the heat of the sun, or for the broken bodies that littered the field, lifeless warriors that would never again return home, then it would have been difficult to imagine that a battle had taken place at all.

A cloaked figure scurries across the dunes, the only living creature within miles. The aftermath of the terrible battle has brought the vultures - scavengers seeking to profit off what the dead can offer. It is a truly dreadful thing, to disturb the final resting places of the deceased simply for one's own gain, but Remnant is a harsh world, and outside the titanic walls of the four great cities, in the badlands where Grimm could strike at any moment, to eke out even the most pitiful of existences, to survive against the monsters of the dark, those living so far from the light of the kingdoms must debase themselves, must behave in a most loathsome manner, if they are to avoid a gruesome death themselves.

It is why so many of these men and women trawl battlefields, taking all that is intact and even that which is not from the corpses of the combatants. The brave militia and hunters who defend humankind from this cold, unforgiving world of death are but careless donations to these scavengers, their bodies and weapons stripped bare so that the people of the badlands can survive another night. The great cities will never come for their children, they say, so why waste a good thing? Rather than allow the possessions of warriors to disappear into the sands, they search the battlefields for what they can repurpose for their own needs, no matter how stained in blood they have been.

This battle had been one of great intensity, the sounds of conflict having been heard even at the very edges of the wasteland. No doubt many scavengers would have begun to traverse across the dunes in order to make their fortune, to plunder the fresh corpses of the myriad combatants. The cloaked figure inspecting the dented armour of a soldier of Vacuo is but the first of them to arrive, and to him, these corpses are an untouched treasure chest. He is glad that he has arrived earlier than all others; it is a dog-eat-dog world, and those who are the most prudent, those who are most lucky, are the ones who will survive the nights of this broken, shattered world.

He quietly tends to the corpse of the Vacuo soldier, ignoring the drying blood and stench of rotting flesh as he removes pieces of armour from the body. It is a method honed through years upon years of work. He has stripped many dead of all their possessions, and the act no longer repulses him. Survival for him and his family is paramount. Here in the wastes, he cannot allow himself to be overtaken by anything else for their sake.

The pieces of armour are dropped into his cart, stained and dented, but still relatively intact. He moves on from the naked corpse, in search of further material, further bodies to scavenge from. Some, he finds, are too ruined, their weapons and garb torn apart by the cruelty of the Grimm they must have fought. Others are perfectly intact, but too inflexible and complex for his purposes, and it is with disappointment that he leaves them behind, keeping them from limiting the amount he can carry.

It is by chance that he encounters the corpse of the woman, face-down against the sand, her long and flowing hair splayed out against the wasteland, their dark colour contrasting against the sickly gold. At first, he is confused. Every other body, every other dead warrior, has been a soldier, a member of the militia. The chartreuse of her jacket, a winter garb so out of place in this desert landscape, is too casual, too unfitting with the uniformity of every other combatant. She bares no identification, no hint to her identity but how utterly different she is to all the others.

As he approaches, he has to revise his first impressions. What could have once been a sword, shattered into thousands of metallic pieces around her corpse. A carbine, dull silver, is intact, enclosed by sand a yard away. This is a huntress then, one of the great warriors trained by the academies to serve on the front line against the forces of the dark. He has never seen the corpse of one before, so far away from the lights of the great cities. Few venture so far out in search of work, and even fewer find themselves dead by the evening. Yet he knows that the hunters possess tools and weapons far beyond what the local militia could offer, and it is with renewed eagerness that he moves closer to inspect the body.

There is a lot of blood beneath the corpse, a sickly dull crimson drying upon grains upon grains of sand. It has stained the fraying edges of the coat covering her body, the red an intense contrast against the bright green of her clothes. Slowly and carefully, he turns her over, and it is shock that first grips him. A single, cold and lifeless eye stares into his own ones, frozen in an angry glare. Her mouth, dribbling a stream of sand down her bloody cheeks, is wide open, as if she had tried to scream before the monsters had killed her. Her left eye is gone. Utterly gone. An empty cavity, covered in dried blood and sand, splinters of her pale skull visible around that void. Yet it is not the horrifying state of the woman, no, the girl's, face, that has shocked him.

She was so young.

He knows that the academies start training the hunters from a young age, but this girl, this corpse of a girl lying in front of him, is at least on the wrong side of twenty. It is terrifying, seeing someone barely out of childhood a ruined mess in the wasteland, the entirety of her left side rendered into bloody, torn flesh and bones. She is barely older than his own daughter, and he is worried and scared, the image of his child in the place of this girl, a victim of the cruelty of the Grimm that seek the deaths of all humans, appearing in his mind. He hurriedly banishes that thought.

Did this girl have friends, he wonders. Was there a family mourning her? Was there a team of hunters trying to fill a chasm that existed? Did they even know she had died?

The scavenger brushes his hand across her coat. Feelings of sympathy aside, he has a duty to his own family. No matter how cruel it seems, no matter how repugnant, he knows that hunters are a treasure haul, and that they carry things that few scavengers could even dream of having. Even if he must despoil the corpse of this young girl, he has to. For the sake of his own people.

The weapons he saw earlier, likely hers, weren't suitable at all. He could not make use of the remains of the sword, and the carbine, Mistralese army-make, was useless for him, and completely empty of any ammunition. He wonders why a Mistralese girl, a Mistralese hunter, is lying here in the wastes of Vacuo. How did she get so far from home?

Why was she dead in the desert wastes, so far from her family and everything she knew and loved?

He couldn't imagine it.

His hand touches something hard, hidden within the chartreuse coat's inner pocket. Curiously, he opens it up, and pulls out what appears to be a set of goggles, enclosed in browning paper. It is beautifully crafted, a masterpiece of technology that instills a sense of wonder and awe in him. Slowly and surely, he unwraps it from its paper cover and places it upon his head. The sudden zoom of the scenery against his eyes takes him utterly off-guard.

It's telescopic, he realises, and further fiddling shows it to have even more settings available.

He looks back down at the corpse of the girl, body frozen in agony and anger and so many emotions, the glare of her single eye almost watching him accusingly. He quickly takes the goggles off, uncomfortable with a sense of guilt. Did she make it, he wonders. Was this girl, this dead hunter, a master craftswoman of a sort? Was she responsible for the creation of this brilliant tool? But why had she not been wearing it? He doesn't know.

He notices that there's writing on that sheet of paper. The words blur into each other. He cannot read it. He can barely read the native script of his own people, and this text ... this ... Mistralese, is far beyond him. Did she ... intend it as a gift of sorts? Had he taken the gift a young girl had wished to give to somebody else?

N A P O L I

It is a single Mistralese word, one that is prominent upon the page. Maybe it's a name. The name of who, he wonders. Who was the intended recipient of this girl's gift? A friend? A member of her family? A lover? He doesn't know, but whoever the dead girl had wished to gift was definitely somebody she cared about. A masterpiece like the goggles he had taken from her would only have been made if that somebody was truly special to her.

He feels guilty now, but he thinks of his own daughter and of his own family and  he knows that this is for their sakes.

There is nothing more for him here. He stands, taking the goggles and paper with him.

The young girl lies against the sands, face and body ruined by battle. Maybe she was beautiful once, but her death has changed that. He takes one last look at the corpse, before sighing and turning away. It is a shame for somebody so young to die, so far from their home in these uncaring, desert wastes. He knows that her people will not look for her. They never do. And so he begins to walk away from her, seeking to distance himself from that horrifying scene. He walks quietly towards another body, knowing that the accusing glare of her single remaining eye will follow his back across the dunes.

And one day, her corpse will slowly rot away, and the sands will bury her.

And nobody will know.