Katya made a face at Renauld’s little lesson. Someone more interested in the anatomy of meat may have listened more closely, but as far as she was aware, the mage just outted himself as a butt-eater, and the young girl definitely wasn’t going to let him forget that.
“Ew,” she squealed, delighted and repulsed,
“Renauld’s a butt-eater!” Siwon was in the distance too now, his skinny figure standing up like a wimpy tree atop the hill. “Hey Siwon,” Katya waved,
“Renauld eats butts!”Hopping off the wagon, the priest ran up the rest of the way, eager to share all the spicy gross details of Renauld Poop-Guzzler with the one member in the party that was on the same level as herself, but stopped dead in her tracks at the sight before her. The carnage was enough to steal her breath away, for just a moment, before she swallowed tightly. Good thing her stomach was empty. It wouldn’t be very nice if she ended up vomiting on any of the people here.
An acidic bite reached the back of her teeth. Katya drew the back of her hand against her mouth, before nodding once at Ettamri, then twice at Oscar, then thrice just to do something. Part of the training that Priests went through was the cremation of the dead, and for better or worse, she had dealt with dead bodies before all this. Some had been old men, reaching the natural end of their lives. Others had been adults and children, succumbing to something as innocuous as a bad cough. They received, sometimes, a few corpses in less stellar condition, but the Father at the Church of First Light, or one of the senior disciples, dealt with those.
And now she had to do five of them, all in such terrible condition.
Katya breathed out, shaking the fuzziness out of her head. Fine, she
would do it then! She was twelve years old, after all! And it wasn’t like these people were flailing, monstrous undead either! There was no danger at all, really. So it was fine.
…
It was fine.
She rolled up her sleeves, exposing her thin, pale arms to the bite of winter, made a face at how the blue sky and bright sun so clearly illuminated the motley brutality visited upon her fellow soldiers, and began to prepare their bodies, using the snow to scrub away what blood she could, pulling metal armor where she could. It was gross most of the time. The blood had congealed and hardened in the cold weather, and Katya called Ettamri over to assist with it, her eyes squeezing shut when the masked knight had to employ creative methods in order to pry off twisted and dented plates. With all that done, Katya laid them all side by side in the snow, before templing her fingers over the hexagram sun that served as Alri-Qua’s symbol. It was a bright day; the efficacy of the consecration would be greater than it otherwise would be. She let white breath hiss between her teeth, and then spoke her prayers.
“Oh Keeper of the Sun, Alri-Qua, I beseech you. Free these souls from their mortal chains.
Oh Lighter of the Torch, Alri-Qua, I beseech you. Guide these souls to their place of repose.
Oh Guardian of the Hearth, Alri-Qua, I beseech you. Ward these souls from the clutch of unlife.
Children of Flame, Return to Ash.
Aeterrno Amora.”
Light, warm as a summer day, undulated from Katya’s hands, as she moved from one corpse to the next, placing her hands on the sides of their face. In one moment, their cold flesh shone incandescently. In the next, they collapsed into white ash, leaving nothing of the humans they once were. She quietly folded their vestiges in the clothes that they left, tying them in compact bundles, before slipping each bundle in the wagon. Hopefully the horses were alright with that. Katya looked at her hands briefly, before sticking them in her pockets and hopping onto the back of the wagon again, looking a bit sullen.
Meanwhile, Renauld’s stint at looting had uncovered a few things of importance. The twin mages, compared to their warrior frontline, were more or less not brutalized at all, and they both had better-looking robes than he did, never mind the blood that spilled near the collar. Their staves too were made of a good, hearty oak, lacquered and hefty, each inset with a small gem, valuable as a catalyst for magic or simply as something to sell to a jeweler. He also tripped over a wheel of the wagon that didn’t seem so badly damaged compared to the rest of the vehicle, which may or may not come in handy.
While the armor that all the fighters had were more or less turned to scrap metal, scrap metal still had some value to the blacksmiths back at Andeave. Though the paladin’s kite shield was functionally useless now, the longsword was a well-balanced weapon, undamaged beyond a couple of superficial nicks in the blade. The thief’s crossbow had a snapped string, but the bolts in the quiver was still fine. His swordbreaker hadn’t even been drawn out, and a weapon like that, though it’d require some special skill to use to its fullest potential, was in perfect condition. The warrior’s greatsword was of a poorer quality compared to that of his compatriots, but it was also definitely usable, though the weight and size may prove cumbersome to most members of the party.
If anything else, it was clear to Renauld that the death of the party had hardly been the fault of their equipment. The weapons the frontline possessed were certainly worth more than all his possession combined, all things considered. Whether the Mage decided to bring it all aboard their increasingly burdened wagon was up to him…and probably to Ettamri too.
By the time Katya finished her rites, the rest of the party was ready to go, Ettamri driving them all onwards through the hill. Oscar guided the pair of horses, Katya sat on the wagon, and the rest were variously behind or beside the wagon. As the sun made its arc over the sky, the hills grew steeper and more cumbersome. Many times, everyone had to push the wagon up sections of terrain too steep for the horses to handle themselves, and there were more than a couple instances where a wheel broke through the layer of ice beneath, causing thoughts of a broken wagon to spring in everyone’s minds. Tragedies in navigation, where the party was faced with hills too steep to ascend upon, ate up time, energy, and morale, and fatigue clung to everyone’s bodies. Ettamri had now dropped to the back of the party, either being the slave driver who pushed everyone onwards from behind, or simply being so fatigued from the distances they’ve travelled and the weight she carried that she could no longer keep up with the pace that she declared herself. Argen was nursing a headache too, the aftermath of his injuries making themselves clear, while Siwon’s legs, trained for bursts of speed, groaned and creaked with each continuous step, his little demon berating him all the while. Oscar’s butt received a good beating from the bumpy terrain they travelled; Renauld’s robes were definitely soaked; Muu had frost building over her leather clothes.
As the terrain shifted from hilly to mountainous, trees began to pop up with greater density, their skeletal frames sporting horizontal spikes of ice and snow where powerful blizzards from days or weeks past have made their mark. The sky was ablaze now, and the party travelled in the miserably cold shadow of the mountain they ascended upon. Moist breath burst from the nostrils of the exhausted horses, the pace slowing down. Was there even a spring at the end of the day’s journey? How old was Ettamri’s map anyways, and how accurate? How much longer could they even go on for, with underfed stomachs and spent legs? If there was a guarantee of warmth and comfort, that’d be great and all, but there was only a chance of it.
No one in the party was talking now, the dour atmosphere from the morning coming back with vengeful force. It’d suck if they all caught a cold from this, wouldn’t it? Overhead, the first stars of the night shone through the deep azure, as the wind howled, its bitter admonishments pushing against them, scattering loose snow over all.
All this, for a maximum of 10 Gold? And 10 Gold over the course of 6 days, assuming they didn’t even bother to take a break once they reach Fort Stalwart, split between 7 people. Was it really worth it? Really?
As thoughts took a dark turn though, a surprising boon was carried down to them by that cruel wind.
The stench of something rotten. The warmth of something moist. It drew memories from Muu, scattered remnants of something indistinct. Their destination existed. They were on the right path. The horses didn’t care for hot springs, but the party certainly did, and slowly, willpower, the promise of a reward at the end of the day’s journey, drove them faster once more. A hot bath, and a monkey butt steak! What luxuries awaited them, if only they could reach it!
Soon, a white mist sucked them in, warm vapours tickling their noses and dampening their hair. Soon, they could hear the bubbling of subterranean water rushing up from the earth. Katya hopped off the wagon and ran up after them, gleeful at the prospect of simply being able to stay still somewhere. It was definitely going to be a good break now!
Splash!Someone, something, entered the spring waters, their silhouette distant, barely visible through the white fog that obscured so much of everything.
An enemy? A friend?
The party stopped.
This was still the wilderness of Altera, no matter how much of a place of rest and recovery it may appear. Monsters were still abound, warm-blooded monsters that may be just as interested in resting in a hot springs as they.
What will they do?
