Elayra cringed when Ghent’s knee smacked the edge of the half-wall. She had to at least give him some credit; he hardly reacted to the hit, and did, at least, manage to stay on his feet.
“Quite the acrobat, Featherhead,” she muttered, smirking, as he drew even with her. She turned to follow him. Ahead, Drust stepped into the narrow, decay-scented alleyway.
Realizing there was a last, important warning they’d forgotten to give him, she reached out to grab Ghent’s arm.
“Ghent.” She leaned in close so he’d hear her whisper. “If… if you’re not used to seeing death,” she began, a stiff solemnity replacing her playfully taunt, “keep your gaze locked on one of us, and nothing else. And use this.” She tugged at the hood on his shirt. “It’ll help.”
A low, but shrill whistle drew Elayra’s attention to the alley.
Drust, the source of the whistle, glared at them. His head jerked in gesture to follow. With a secondary twitch, his scowl momentarily twisted into something more sinister.
Elayra prodded Ghent onward. She took a deep breath, taking in a last lungful of this fresher air, then followed.
With glass shards spearing out of one side, the alleyway wasn’t large enough for them to walk side-by-side. Elayra settled on keeping Ghent in the center—though closer to Drust, from the back, she could keep an eye on him. On both of them.
The town’s stench amplified in the narrow space. A few bones littered the earthen entrance, though whether they were human or animal, she couldn’t tell.
Drust paused at the exit. He held a hand to his side in gesture for his charges to stop, then peered cautiously into the wider street beyond. Satisfied, he beckoned for them to move on, then entered the backroads of the town.
Elayra hesitated, steeling herself for what she knew awaited them. She made sure her hair would help conceal her uninfected eyes, then followed. In the wider road, she moved to walk beside Ghent, keeping as close to Drust as she dared.
A main cause of the town’s stench became immediately evident; the Cursed didn’t bother to bury their dead.
Corpses in various stages of decomposition lined the road like macabre snow-drifts. More bones and a few fleshy limbs spilled over into the cleared center of the road—some attached to bodies, others not. Blood and other things Elayra didn’t want to contemplate pooled in the cracks of the broken cobblestones.
Flies buzzed about in swarms. Startled at their approach, a rat hissed threateningly from near a pile of half-eaten bodies. The size of a small housecat, thin veins of black wove through its fully red eyes.
Drust growled down at the thing, then hissed back, his whole body twisting menacingly with the sound.
Elayra nearly tripped on the rat as it fled, scurrying between her and Ghent’s feet. It dragged something rust-colored along in its mouth, leaving a glistening trail in its wake.
Elayra swallowed back bile. She struggled to not react, to not let herself think about what they were walking through.
The Curse-ridden relished in this. The smell of death. The décor of liquid life. The cries of anguish and agony.
Violence. Chaos. Ruin.
It was a truth Drust had made sure she understood long ago. But knowing that had never lessened the impact of seeing it like this.
Outside of cities and towns, the damage was minimal. The wilds were more wild, yes, but it was open space with mostly animals to deal with. Nature did its thing there, time burying the dead itself. But here, it was condensed, trapped inside the walled streets and spurred on by the creativeness of the human minds the Crimson Curse had warped.
Even if the town center was only a block over, it still wouldn’t have been close enough for Elayra’s liking.

Ghent stiffened as Elayra grabbed his arm, the abruptness sending a jolt of alarm through his body. In a world as precarious as Wonderland, the action could have meant nothing, or everything.
”What is it?” Ghent whispered back, his eyes searching hers for an explanation. His brain scrambled for any guesses, but he was too rattled. He couldn’t seem to come up with one coherent thought.
The message soon became clear, summed up with a single word. Death. Ghent knew that seeing death was inevitable in a world plagued with the Curse, but he hadn’t expected to see it so soon. He hadn’t even run out of snacks yet.
”Uh, right…appreciate the heads up.” Ghent shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t bother pretending he had experience like Elayra did; his unease would be obvious if it wasn’t already. He started to reach for the hem of his hood, the whistle nearly causing him to jump out of his skin.
Gulping, Ghent hurried after the Knight, his mind racing with his feet. He had only attended one funeral in his life – his uncle’s - and the casket had been closed. He tried to reflect on a handful of character deaths he had seen in the movies, a pathetic attempt to prepare himself for the upcoming exposure to a corpse. Or corpses.
But I have seen death. Ghosts are dead, aren’t they? Ghent took as small of a breath as he could. The air was putrid, more rancid than the dumpsters back in the alleyway with Miles. The smell, coupled with his fear, made his stomach knot. He missed the Safe Zone.
Sooner than Ghent liked, they came to a stop. He eyed the glass-laden alleyway with the reluctance of a cat facing water. He didn’t want to proceed single file. He didn’t want to proceed at all.
As Elayra flanked them from the back, Ghent shuffled toward the middle. For once, he had no complaints. Being in the center of a Drust-and-Elayra sandwich was the probably safest place to be.
Remembering his hood at the last minute, Ghent tugged it up and over the top of his head. As he pulled, he was caught off guard by the heft of the fabric. Simultaneously, he felt something attached to the top of the material flop forward.
Cursing mentally, Ghent reached up. He groped around for the culprit, his fingers closing around something that felt like a droopy rabbit’s ear. A mental image of Henry’s favorite Winnie-the-Pooh onesie – complete with bear ears -- flashed through his mind. Sure enough, a matching ear was on the opposite side, but this one was shorter. The material was jagged, as if it had been gnawed off by a hungry hound rather than cut.
Ghent bristled, agitated by the thought of looking ridiculous so soon after the boxers incident. He attempted to catch his own reflection in the broken shards of glass, but he saw nothing to reveal the curiosity that was his hood.
The bones were enough for Ghent to forget his petty troubles. He couldn’t help but stare as they passed, the sight causing his breath to quicken, resulting in an intake of air.
Gagging, Ghent smothered the bottom half of his face with his hand, his breaths filtered through his own sweaty palm. The smell had gotten about ten times worse, and he had a feeling that the view wasn’t much better.
He continued to shadow Drust, his eyes never straying from the Knight's back. He didn’t acknowledge Elayra when she came up alongside him; he was too petrified to look anywhere else.
Something hissed nearby. Fearing a Shadowmire had come for revenge, Ghent turned sharply, staff raised. As he did, he made a horrible, irreversible mistake. He looked.
The first thing Ghent processed was the monstrosity that was the rat. An object he couldn’t identify was sticking out of its mouth, likely a piece of garbage it had scavenged from the pile next to it.
No.
Not garbage.
Like a pair of binoculars coming into focus, the shapeless mass behind the creature sharpened into view. The rat had been feasting on what appeared to be a pile of bodies.
“No, no, no, no way...” Ghent staggered back, the blood draining from his face. The more he looked, the worse it got. Heaps of bodies were scattered as far as the eye could see, limbs of different shapes and sizes jutting out at every which angle. Pools of crimson dotted the road ahead of them, adding color to an otherwise monochrome scene.
Gasping, Ghent automatically sidestepped to give the rat a wide berth. As his foot reconnected with the ground, he felt a rubbery sphere roll underneath his sneaker. Against his better judgment, he looked again, and he could have sworn the sphere was looking back.
Ghent’s staff clattered to the ground. Overcome by the horror of the carnage, he started to scream, but he ended up retching. His hands moved to the front of his thighs as he leaned forward, vomiting onto the bloodied cobblestone.

Elayra’s attention snapped from the rat to Ghent as the boy spoke. She hissed a wordless warning at him for his quiet denial, but the sound faltered; she did a double take as she at last noticed the ears on his hood. But its comedic effect was overshadowed as she registered his expression; his horror-swollen gaze roved the street-turned-dumping-grounds around him.
Apparently, her advice to not look had worked it’s magic a little too well.
The rat didn’t give her time shut down more sounds from him before it scurried toward them, distancing them and making matters worse.
The clatter of Ghent’s staff sounded like a clap of thunder in the quieter quarter of the city. Elayra jumped, heart in her throat. She instinctively reached for her saber, her own fear overshadowing her boiling frustrations. She cringed, pity tinging her frustration further as Ghent threw up.
The sound threatened to be the final straw to make the contents of her own stomach join the other rotten things riming the street.
Drust, too, had spun toward his sounds of distress, but his fury shone over his concern—if there was still enough of himself left to be concerned for their safety. His neck and fingers twitched. His arm jerked oddly, as if fighting with himself to not draw his katana. An irate sneer twisted his face.
Before Elayra could sort between the terror of potential discovery, anger that Ghent was—again—a hinderance rather than a help, and the confusing prickle of compassion for his predicament, Drust swooped past her.
“Drust! Don’t—!” She reached out toward him, but he was quicker.
Snarling, Drust gripped the back of Ghent’s hoodie at the boy’s neck. Heedless of Ghent’s condition, the Knight hauled him into the nearest alleyway, treading carelessly over a couple corpses in front of it.
Elayra hurried after them, scooping up Ghent’s staff without pause. The cobblestones turned into rubble in the new alleyway, the mix of stone, bone, and dirt crunching wetly beneath her boots. Wider than the one they’d entered through, someone had slathered careless patch-jobs of stucco mixed with children’s marbles on the buildings.
“Stay close,” Drust ground out, his gravely words low and clipped. Mid-way down the alleyway, Drust slammed Ghent against a wall. “Stay. Quiet.”
One of Drust's hands fisted the front of Ghent’s hoodie, pinning the boy in place. He clasped the gloved hand of the other over Ghent’s mouth. The red of Drust’s irises had narrowed his pupils to pinpricks, the veins branching out from them pulsing with eager, hungry wrath.
“Two. Rules.” Drust’s head twitched, his face barely an inch from Ghent’s. “Two! You blithering… useless…!” He spluttered, his snarled words catching on his tongue. He pulled Ghent from the wall to slam him against it again, harder.
“Featherhead?” Elayra supplied, lunging at him with one of the sheathed blades to get him to back down before he did any real damage to Ghent.
Drust’s attention snapped to her. He released Ghent’s mouth to deflect Elayra’s blow. He gripped the staff just beneath the blade and wrenched it toward him, trying to stagger her. Instead, she used the momentum to kick at him.
To her plan, Drust fully released Ghent. He gripped her boot at her ankle and twisted it, forcing her to turn with the motion, or risk injury. Though she’d been expecting it, her hand already at her saber’s hilt and body tilted to counter drawing it, she failed to account for the slick gravel.
The ground shifted awkwardly beneath her supporting leg. He tugged on her foot, and she lost what balance she had. She caught herself before she smacked into the ground, but Drust released her ankle, and shoved her down with a foot to her back.
The stench of decomposing meat and feces filled her nose with a new intensity. This time, she couldn’t keep from choking on the bile that burned her throat.
Fighting to swallow it back, her hand shot out and grabbed the foot Drust had planted beside her. Using the looseness of the ground to her advantage, she wrenched it out from beneath him, and he fell back. She rolled from him and staggered to her feet. Blackish-red smeared her hair and chin where it had sunk into the sludgy gravel.
Her back thumped into the opposite side of the alleyway. She leaned her weight against it, knees shaking slightly, and spat out what she hoped was just her own bodily fluids. Her stomach threatened full retaliation at the thought of the alternative.

Before he could so much as spit the taste from his mouth, Ghent felt a hand close around his hood. In his dazed state, he foolishly believed that Drust was on a mission to remove him from the nightmare that was the town.
Any such hope was soon snuffed out.
Ghent gasped as his body connected with the alley wall. He opened his mouth to speak, but he was silenced. He swallowed hard, his salvia tasting foul to him. The darkness in Drust’s eyes spoke volumes. The Knight was angry enough to murder him, Ghent was sure of it.
A second slam. This time, with enough force for Ghent to shout out, the sound muffled due to Drust’s palm. Had Ghent been given a chance, this was where he would have blurted out a frantic, nonsensical apology, if only to save his own skin.
Groveling wasn’t necessary, however. Elayra saw to that.
Cheeks wet with tears, Ghent’s eyes flickered from Drust to Elayra. He couldn’t decide if her interference was courageous or foolish, but he was thankful for it. He took in a gulp of foul-tasting air as soon as he was released, his legs buckling beneath him.
I can’t do this. Ghent dropped to his knees. He was better level with the corpse near the center of the alleyway, scattered remains of someone who had lived and breathed just as he did. He shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut to block out the hellish world around him.
Do something, you idiot! Ghent’s inner voice screamed at him. Elayra was going toe-to-toe with Drust, but she couldn’t hold him off forever. If the Knight decided to, he could add both of their corpses to the nearby pile.
Ghent inhaled and exhaled in small, ragged pants. His head snapped up when he heard Elayra fall, something Drust was quick to take advantage of. The Knight pressed his boot against her back, pinning her to the ground as he had with Ghent and the wall.
Fear merged with rage. Still trembling, Ghent rose, a dangerous look in his eye. Elayra had said that magic could kill the Knight.
Before further action could be taken, the tables were reversed. Ghent flinched in surprise as Drust pitched backward, thrown off balance thanks to Elayra’s quick thinking.
It was the chance Ghent needed. The chance they needed.
Without hesitating, Ghent bolted past Drust to reach Elayra’s side. “We’re leaving,” he hissed, his eyes wild with desperation. He grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her to follow him. “NOW.”

Snarling, Drust reached out to catch himself on the wall as he stumbled. Finding no purchase, he thumped down near the remnants of the stray corpse.
Elayra’s gaze barely flicked to Ghent as the other teen moved to her side, her attention locked on Drust. She pushed from the wall as the Knight swiftly turned to get back to his feet. She angled herself between him and Ghent.
“Don’t lose to it, Dru—!” she started, ignoring Ghent’s first order. But, instead of using her as a shield as she’d expected, Ghent grabbed her arm, his last demand echoing in the alleyway as he tugged at her.
She lurched after him, momentarily too surprised to resist. Heat radiated in her chest. Anger fully drowned out her fear, a new kind of disgust filling the space of her revulsion of the town. It was his mess she was cleaning up.
She clenched her teeth, got her footing, and yanked her arm from him. “Then leave!”
She moved to shove Ghent’s back, but a familiar hand clamped around her mouth from behind and pulled her away. With his other, Drust snatched at Ghent’s hood again to wrench the teen back and silence him as he’d done with Elayra.
Elayra stumbled back into Drust, trapped against his chest. Trying to not inhale the now foul odor clinging to his glove, she reached for the hand to pry it off and slip out beneath his hold.
“Quiet!” he snapped, the word a gravely hush near her ear. A glance at Drust’s face—closer to her in his half-crouch—stilled her.
Drust’s pupils fought for more real estate in the black-veined red of his irises. But, more importantly, he wasn’t focused on his charges. Instead, he stared, hard, at the alley’s opening.
She stiffened and eyes widened as she heard what the Knight had caught well before her: conversing voices.
Or, rather, a poor simulation of a conversation. First two voices, then three, then four. They echoed around the trio, their exact direction impossible for Elayra to pinpoint. Each of them was not quite right for a human voice, yet still undeniably human. Their ‘words’ jerked about in snippets, general sounds shoved together into a near incomprehensible mush.
The broken language of broken minds.
They had drawn the attention of the Cursed.

”Are you INSANE?!” Ghent spun to face Elayra, angered and dismayed by her resistance. He didn't have time to argue with her, yet here they were, butting heads for the umpteenth time. “You can’t stay here, especially not with…” he recoiled, gasping. Like something out of a horror movie, Drust appeared behind Elayra.
An annoyingly familiar yank on his hood caused Ghent to topple backward. He landed opposite Elayra, groaning. They had one chance to escape, and that chance had been ripped away the second the Knight regained his footing.
Muzzled once more, a new wave of terror crashed over Ghent. Due to Drust's hand, he couldn't summon a focus word if he wanted to. He found himself tensing in anticipation, his body still sore from being slammed against the wall.
Contrary to what was expected, Drust didn’t lash out physically...but not because of self-restraint.
Trembling like a victim of frostbite, Ghent followed Drust's gaze. A series of garbled voices flooded the alleyway, the source yet to be seen. It was difficult to determine how many voices there were, or where they were coming from, but there was definitely more than one speaker, which meant there was more than one set of eyes to avoid.
Keep your eyes hidden. Drust's warning from before sounded in Ghent's mind. Diverting his attention downward, he tugged on his hood to help conceal his eyes, hoping against hope that they would somehow go undetected.

With Ghent firmly in his hold, Drust started to take slow, silent steps away from the entrance of the alley.
Feeling the movement, Elayra shifted to follow his lead. Her gaze slid toward Ghent when the other teen tried to conceal his eyes with his hood.
She gave a soft snort; with his shouted accusation of her being insane, she could only hope they’d be lucky enough that hiding their eyes would be enough now. If any of the Cursed had heard that—a voice and words not corroded by insanity—it was over.
The thought had barely flit through her head when a dry hiss came from behind them.
“In… hhhhsss-k-k-k…ane,” it tried to mimic, sounding like it had something lodged in its throat.
Drust released his charges and spun toward the voice, one hand out in gesture for the teens to stay behind him. Elayra stumbled slightly from the sudden release.
Holding her breath from more than just the stench, she turned so her back faced the wall, giving her easy sight down both sides of the alley.
Movement caught Elayra’s eye. Further down, she noticed a recessed entryway partially hidden by stone shards sticking out of its frame.
A figure lurched out from the recess, body moving in odd jerks as if its muscles weren’t all quite in-sync. A woman, if its tattered skirt was anything to judge by, it staggered toward the center of the alley, and stopped. Grime and blood masked her gaunt face and matted her hair
If that was what—who, Elayra reminded herself—had spoken, at least it—she—was only one of the Forsaken. There was still a chance of skirting by.
As if some cruel entity had heard the thought and laughed, a second figure scuttled after the first. Ungainly and almost spider-like, it nearly rammed into the woman’s legs. The thing—the child, judging by its size, crouched low, its bony fingers dragging in the fouled gravel beside it.
As dirty as its companion, he—or she, it was impossible to tell—was clad in tattered clothes made from a hound; lupine paws protruded from the sides of its shirt. The child’s real arms and legs looked more like something from a corpse than something belonging to the living.
The woman had a forgen with her.
It noticed where its elder’s attention was pointed. It wheezed a whining hiss, baring a mix of normal teeth and pointed bits of rock or bone shoved into previous gaps.
It looked to the intruders. In eerie unison, both Forsaken and forgen’s heads flopped to one side. Their eyes, red veined with black from corner to corner, seemed to almost glow in the dimness.
Elayra swallowed back her panic. She twitched her head so her hair better fell over her face, and jerked her stance wide, trying to mirror both Drust and the child’s demeanor and expressions. She glanced to Ghent, subtly gesturing for him to do the same, but paused. Her gaze flicked toward the alleyway’s opening.
The Cursed on the main road had gone eerily silent.
“Oo-ich-k-k-k?” The woman’s whole body shuddered as her voice stuck on the choking sound.
Drust gave a warning growl, his own stance low and threatening. Thankfully, he didn’t speak.
The forgen hissed again, fingers digging agitatedly into the ground.
“Sp-e-k-k ool!” The woman’s eyes narrowed, the exact direction of her gaze impossible to gage. “Ne… Cur-en-k-k-SHEEEEE!”
The child joined in on the woman’s high-pitched screech. The sound echoed from the opposite direction as those who had fallen silent picked up the cry.
Fingers curled like claws at her side, the woman rushed for the trio, but the forgen was quicker. Its bare feet kicking up the gravel, it rushed them with wild speed, jumped to the wall, and kicked off, flinging itself at Ghent and Elayra, cracked nails splayed and mismatched teeth bared murderously.

Ghent didn't need to be told twice. As soon as he was let go, he moved closer to Elayra, his breaths coming in short, quick pants. He couldn't see the speaker, but the mere sound of its awful, raspy voice embodied the horrors they had witnessed so far.
Where is it?! Ghent's head was on a swivel. He unintentionally bumped shoulders with Elayra as he spun around, searching the ground with an unhinged amount of desperation. His staff was gone.
“Elayra! I need a weapon!” Ghent whispered to the blonde, probably too loudly. He was in a state of panic. His staff had quickly become his security blanket, and now it was gone. He needed something tangible to defend himself with.
Then, he saw it. The staff was only a few feet from them, half submerged in a reddish-brown puddle. It must have been dropped during the scuffle between Drust and Elayra.
Ghent didn't wait to be told no. Using Drust as his cover, he darted forward in a half-crouch. When close enough, he snatched up his staff, cringing as the slick, unknown substance transferred to his fingers. Wiping off his hand against the side of his pant leg, he scrambled back to the others, prize in hand.
Following Elayra's lead, Ghent positioned himself so that the wall was to his back. He was just in time to witness the hissing figure emerge from the shadows, a sight that caused him to openly gasp.
A newer, bigger wave of panic swept over Ghent. He moved back automatically, trying to create distance between himself and what he assumed was a woman. Her movements were jagged and unnatural, like a puppet being controlled by a marionettist.
To make matters worse, the woman wasn't alone. A smaller, bonier figure joined her, equally as gruesome in appearance, if not more so. A child.
Ghent's throat tightened. He stared at the pair beneath the shadow of his hood. There were many horrible things for his brain to process, the child's maw being one of them. The child boasted an unsightly combination of rocks, bones, and rotten teeth in its mouth, perfect for tearing apart human flesh.
Ghent stole a glance at Elayra. He picked up on the fact that she and Drust were standing similarly, so he tried to mirror them. His knees threatened to buckle as he broadened his stance, his muscles tense and achy.
Suddenly, silence. But not in a good way. In the calm-before-the-storm kind of way.
Ghent had to remind himself to breathe. He had a few focus words in his arsenal, but Drust was too close. He couldn't risk taking down the one person who could protect them.
Dizzy with anticipation, Ghent's eyes snapped to the woman as she began speaking again. The noises in her throat sounded like they should have been words, but weren't. It was impossible to translate -- the Orcs in The Lord of the Rings spoke with more eloquence.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the woman's offspring joined in, and then it made the first move. It catapulted itself forward, using the wall as momentum for its attack.
Ghent screamed a scream of genuine terror. His body moved before his brain could. He swung his staff horizontally, using the magical weapon as nothing more than a baseball bat.

As the Cursed duo rushed them, Elayra went for her saber, and Drust met the woman head-on. He gripped the woman’s arms easily, holding them out, making her thrash and kick wildly. Compared to him, she looked like little more than frail doll throwing a tantrum.
Behind him, the forgen was faster than Elayra’s draw. She reached to shove Ghent aside, but she didn’t get the chance.
Ghent’s terrified shriek made Elayra’s ear ring, startling her. Catching his movement, she instinctively ducked.
With a hefty [i[thwak[/i], Ghent’s sword hit the forgen. The creature squealed—a sound more fit for a pig than a human as it tumbled sideways. A claw of one of the paws on the shirt caught on a strand of her hair as it flew past.
Without so much as a glance their way, Drust tossed the Forsaken into the airborne path of the forgen.
The Cursed duo collided. They tangled together in a cacophony of screeches and garbled words as they tumbled and skid over the loose gravel.
“That would’ve been impressive if not for the scream, Featherhead!” Elayra said, as she at last had time to draw her blue-bladed sword. She turned her head to Ghent with a wobbly grin, but even that faded at the sight of the alleyway’s entrance.
The first of the other Forsaken lumbered into the alleyway, a massive, bald man riddled with scars and half-dragging a rusted shovel.
“Run!” Elayra reached for Ghent’s wrist to tug him along with her as she ran deeper into the alley. Hoping he’d stay close, she released him to free her hand.
Drust glanced at the alley’s opening. His neck twitched, scowling at the newcomers. “First right!” he barked, following his charges.
“St-k-iiiig!” The Forsaken untangled herself from the youth just enough to lurch for Elayra as she passed, expression rabid.
Teeth grit, she met the woman with a thrust from her sword. The woman screeched as the blade drove into her arm. The sound cut short as Elayra’s boot slammed into her face. The Forsaken sprawled backward.
The forgen hissed and scuttled away, abandoning its elder to lope back into the building it had originally come from.
Undaunted, face twisted in insanity and pain, the Forsaken lunged yet again at the nearest of the trio.
This time, quick as a blink, Drust snatched the woman by her matted hair before she could reach her target. Without breaking stride, he wrenched her screeching, writhing from into him, then savagely twisted her neck.
His own neck twitched, revulsion and a satisfied grin fighting for dominance on his face.
He tossed the woman’s limp body aside, leaving the new corpse to rot, nameless, with its fellows.

Ghent might have bragged about his reflexes, but he didn't have time to bask in Elayra's praise. The entrance was quickly flooding with Forsaken.
"That was a battle cry! Not a scream!" Pride taking yet another hit, Ghent spun away from the crowd and started to run. He kept up with Elayra and began to surpass her, the ears of his hood flying behind him.
The order was simple, but Ghent still managed to overcomplicate its meaning. Was Drust warning them against going right, or did he want them to turn right? Ghent's indecision only lasted a few seconds, but it was long enough for Elayra to catch up with him.
"TURN RIGHT!" After settling the internal debate himself, Ghent relayed the order to Elayra. Drust's voice was loud, but so were the shouts, snarls, and gibberish of their pursuers. He didn't want to risk her missing the memo.
As the teenagers fled the scene, a heavyset Forsaken pushed its way through the pack, slower than the rest due to his size. His neck was crooked, and his vein-riddled arms were covered with dirt and scratches. A much smaller figure clung to his back, its single eye darting from Ghent, to Drust, to Elayra. It shrieked angrily as Elayra's boot met the face of the nearest Forsaken and howled as Drust made quick work of the other.
The one-eyed forgen continued to throw a fit, its tantrum riling up the others. It pointed forward and smacked its knobby knees against the neck of the Forsaken, as if the larger of the two was its own personal steed. 
The Forsaken had enough. He reached up and grabbed the chittering forgen by the scruff of its filthy coat. Snarling, he flung the smaller creature toward the center of the alley like it was nothing more than a bowling ball.
The forgen sailed through the air, and rolled upon landing. It used the momentum of the throw to spring forward, breathing hard and babbling incessantly as it sped past Drust.
The commotion reached Ghent's ears. He looked over his shoulder midrun, mortified by the sight of the forgen scrambling after them on all fours, mannerisms more beast than human.
"Uh, Elayra?!" Ghent started to warn her of their pursuer, but his failure to keep his eyes on the road resulted in him tripping over some of the rubble strewn throughout the alleyway. He was running too fast to correct his footing, and so he fell with an unceremonious crash.
"L...iii...rah!" The forgen parroted Elayra's name as it caught up with its prey. It leapt onto Ghent's back as he started to stand, biting and scratching at any flesh it could.
Ghent shouted. He reached back to grab the forgen with his free hand, and was savagely bitten in the process. 
Swearing loudly, Ghent spun around. He slammed his back against the nearest wall in the hope of knocking the forgen off, but the little beast held on tight.
A crash sounded overhead. Shards of broken glass rained down as a second forgen -- this one with part of its nose missing -- attempted to tackle Elayra from above.

Elayra startled at Ghent's delayed screech reiterating Drust’s order. She only just managed to resist throwing an irritated punch at his shoulder as they ran.
“Little louder!” she growled, unsure and not really caring if Ghent heard her over the hubbub of their pursuers. “Don’t think the clouds heard!”
She slowed, readying for the turn, when the cry of one of the Cursed grew steadily louder, merging with Ghent’s terrified warning. A warning that followed with him tripping.
“Ghent!” She slid to a stop, silently cursing his clumsiness.
Drust, directly behind Ghent, spat out a wild curse of his own as he danced over Ghent, avoiding tripping over the self-felled teen. Before he could wrench Ghent up or intercept the forgen racing toward them, a Cursed lurched at him from the shadows of another doorway.
An older teenager, chunks of hair were missing from his head. He screeched in eerie tandem with the hoard bottlenecking at the alley’s entrance—a Forsaken, not a forgen.
Despite a few missing or otherwise stubbed fingers, he brandished a meat cleaver in one hand and a large fillet knife in the other. Blood already splattered the tools-turned-weapons and the teenager’s infection-pocked face.
Growling, Drust twisted easily from the raging Forsaken’s path. It stumbled forward between him and Elayra as the forgen-turned-bowling-ball sprung at Ghent.
Elayra raised her sword, ready to drive it into the young butcher, when shattering glass drew her attention upward.
She had just enough time to raise her saber defensively before the forgen that had launched itself from a window landed atop her. She staggered back from its sudden weight, shards of glass scraping against her exposed skin.
The flat side of her saber dug into the child’s midsection, and she gripped it's throat, keeping it far enough from her so it couldn't do the damage it had lusted for. It snarled at its thwarted surprise attack, showing a mouth of rotting teeth. It’s half-missing nostril tried to flair in its anger, but only crumpled oddly.
It grabbed at her shoulders to stay on it's prey, jagged nails gouging into her. It tried for her neck, but, with a guttural shout, she threw it from herself, twisting her sword so its edge drew across the forgen’s stomach as it went. It wailed as it tumbled from her.
Behind her, the butcher boy slashed his fillet knife at her, but Drust gripped the teenager’s wrist and wrenched him away from her. The butcher boy tried to strike at him with the cleaver, but Drust grabbed that wrist as well and snapped both of them with a simple twist.
The butcher boy—and the others growing unnervingly closer—howled. In a single motion, Drust took the fillet knife from the Forsaken and slashed it across the butcher boy’s throat, silencing him in a waterfall of red.
The butcher boy stumbled back, choking and gurgling. He tumbled backwards over the window forgen as it tried to lurch to standing, the younger Cursed grasping at its own bleeding wound. The Forsaken’s weight pinned the dying youth to the ground.
While Drust disposed of the butcher boy, Elayra looked to where Ghent fought against his clingy forgen. She swiftly drew the stiletto from her boot. With the precision of a sniper, she threw it at the forgen’s head sticking out beside Ghent’s.
Too preoccupied with clawing and sinking its teeth into Ghent, it didn’t see the weapon coming. It punctured its skull with a wet shunk.
Before its hold fully loosened, she grabbed Ghent's arm and pulled him forward. This time, she didn’t let him go, not wanting to risk him tripping again.
She locked her gaze on the opening to their destination, trying to not look at the newest corpses as she stepped around them.
Drust lingered behind them only long enough to retrieve the stiletto from the fallen forgen. His long stride caught up to his charges quickly, though he kept a few paces behind.
Ahead, more Curse-ridden had started to trickle out of other doorways.
Elayra tugged Ghent down the right-hand alley Drust had directed them to. Narrower than the first, the path wove in a serpentine wave, the decaying walls of the buildings built to match. Here, thankfully, there were no doors, no windows.
After taking a sharp turn, Elayra skid to a halt, ready to pull Ghent with her if she needed to.
Her eyes widened, and she swore her heart skipped a few beats.
A hodgepodge wall created from a mix of stones and bone blocked their path. Newer than the alleyway’s walls, it rose the full three stories of the buildings hemming them in. Metel poles strewn with netting stuck out of the top. A few dead birds weighted the netting.
The trio had effectively trapped themselves.
“Drust!” she spun toward him, voice quivering with the fear she’d tried so hard to keep hidden.
Drust stopped behind her, snarling, his neck twitching. He glanced at the dead end, then to the walls, then up to the relatively flat roofs, then to Elayra’s blood-stained sword.
“Sheath it!” he snapped.
Elayra stiffened, fitting Drust’s glances to his logic. “I can’t jump that! And Ghent—”
“Sheath. It!” His neck and fingers twitched with each strained word.
Elayra obeyed, some part of her cringing at shoving her soiled sword into its scabbard. Such a small, stupid thing to care about with a hoard of Cursed on their tail, but still.
With the forgen and Forsaken’s cries and gibberish words echoing around them, growing closer, Drust flung Elayra over one shoulder, Ghent over the other, then ran toward the dead end, gathering speed.
Behind them, a man all jutting bone and a woman with more bulk than reasonable for someone living in squaller raced into the narrow space. The spindly man scuttled quickly closer, his movements insectile. He lunged for them just as Drust leapt at one of the alleyway walls.
The Forsaken’s fingers brushed against Drust’s boots, but found no purchase. Thrown off balance from his miss, the Forsaken tumbled to the ground.
Elayra clung to Drust as well and tightly as she could. She silently prayed Ghent would hold still, would avoid knocking Drust off course as the White Knight sprung off one wall, twisted mid-air, and pushed off the opposite wall, kick-climbing to the rooftops.
With a last, calculated leap, he landed deftly and light as a cat on the edge of the rotting roof, and released his charges.
Above the putrid city, the sky shone in the dark pinks and oranges of fading twilight. The sun itself had sunk beneath the horizon in the east, as if even it was tired of bearing witness to what had become of the land it watched. Night chased it’s heels, dark blues slowly consuming the sun’s fire.
Around the trio, the rooftops stretched before them. Narrow gaps showed where one string of buildings ended and the next began. Some roofs were slightly steepled, some flat. Some were rotting away or sagging, others riddled with repairs like a patchwork quilt. Some shingled, others a hodgepodge of supplies like the walls they’d encountered entering the town.
“Town Center! To the north!” Drust ordered with a quick, jerky gesture to indicate north. Elayra glanced behind her as she heard the familiar scrape of him pulling his katana free.
Below them, the Curse-ridden clawed at the walls, trying to find a way up after their prey.

"GET OFF, GET OFF, GET OFF!" Ghent continued to panic as he fought against the creature half his size. He was amazed -- and horrified -- by its reliance, its strength frighteningly apparent through its hold alone.
The forgen shrieked in fury, blood and saliva spewing from its mouth. It climbed higher up Ghent's back, broken fingernails searching for his eyes.
"QUIT IT!" Glass crunched underneath Ghent's shoes as he collided with the opposite wall, earning another howl from the forgen. The lack of momentum resulted in a hit with less strength than before, and so it continued to maul him. 
The sound of metal piercing flesh rang through Ghent's skull. He wondered if he had taken the hit himself, but the thrashing stopped, and the forgen went limp.
A familiar hand closed around his arm. Ghent's eyes -- both thankfully still intact -- welled with gratitude. He stammered his thanks as he followed after Elayra, the movement enough for gravity to claim the corpse. The forgen slid away from his shoulders, its body hitting the ground with a sickening plop. 
"H-hey! Up ahead!" In an attempt to be helpful, Ghent alerted Elayra of the obvious yet again. He switched directions when she did, giving her free reign of navigation.
Ghent noted the path ahead was more compact, something that caused him to wonder if this was good for their group, or bad. There were no places of exit that he could see, so he decided that it was good.
It wasn't.
A dead end. Spots danced in front of Ghent's eyes as the remaining blood drained from his face. He felt sick, like he might vomit again, but his stomach had already been emptied.
"You have a plan, right?" Ghent's voice shook as he turned. Out of instinct, he sought out the only adult in the group. "Right?!"
Before either teen could challenge the Knight about his order, Elayra was plucked from the ground. Ghent's befuddled shout turned into a grunt as he too was flung over the Knight's shoulder, opposite the princess. It may have been a funny sight, if not for the large wall and the freakshow behind them.
Ghent's bloody fingers closed around the fabric of Drust's shirt as he took in their current obstacle, his brain putting two and two together.
"No way. Are you seriously gonna parkour us out of here?!" Ghent tried to get a look at Drust's expression for confirmation, but it was impossible to look back enough to see his face.
Ghent's mouth fell open in a silent scream as their savior became airborne, twisting and turning to remove them from harm's way. The sensation was oddly reminiscent of the thrill rides at the fair, terror and nausea included.
Then, it was over. Ghent barely regained his footing after being released, his knees weaker than they had been previously. He searched the rooftops after the gesture north, his anxiety palpable as he took in Drust's newly drawn weapon.
"Shouldn't we stick together?" Ghent glanced at Elayra. Drust may have been dangerous, but that danger was the only thing that kept them alive. "Isn't there a focus word for this? Can't I, I dunno, blast them with a fireball or something?!"
The Curse-ridden continued to shriek and squabble underneath them, each desperate for a piece of their prey.