Resuming their course up the Hari Path gave Hirrus time to use the healing Arcana Blessed Medica to top himself off and give Alric back a large amount of his missing hit points. After that, Phrase of Luminosity would let the rest of what Alric was missing regenerate over the next few seconds. It seemed a small thing, now that the act was not leaving him open to an unseen foe, but Alric was disproportionately grateful.

“If you wish to thank me,” Hirrus grumbled, “I’d settle for a half-hour of silence.”

Alric made a zipping gesture over his mouth, starting a silence that lasted nearly fourteen minutes.

Considering what they saw fourteen minutes farther up the road, Hirrus found it excusable.

“Holy fuck,” Alric said, staggering to a stop. “Oh, no, not again.”

Before them wasn’t a town.

It was a wide spot in the road.

Six buildings. Four of them were houses, but there was one tavern and then behind it a distillery. A cute little hand-made sign declared it to be “Mugport, home of Mugport Ale” boasting a population of thirteen, with the number twelve crossed out next to it.

Not one of those thirteen people were present.

The buildings were intact - not burnt like the previous place - but every door hung open on its hinges. There was a mouse in the general store, sleeping on the counter next to a rack of old loaves of bread.

Hirrus drew steel as they entered Mugport. It was an odd name for a town so far from the sea, but he supposed when you had this few people, you could call yourselves whatever you wanted as long as nobody argued.

His mind wasn’t on geography, though. He feared the next attack. Another person like him seeking do ensure their collective destruction by letting Rumi continue with his sick game.

Mugport was empty, though. Not a single soul. No one cowering in fear of whatever had happened. No one skulking around looking for an opportunity to strike.

There weren’t even any corpses.

Whatever Rumi did here, there was nobody left.

“The text on the sign was recent,” Alric warned. “Like, last week kind of recent.”

“Hm?” Hirrus’ attention was still devoted to the area around him, seeking foes.

“Look at this place,” Alric said, gesturing around. “Four houses. Families. None of them are new. There’s not many ways for just one person to be added to the population of a place like this.”

Hirrus flinched, his attention distracted by the sudden image of Dahlia - heavily pregnant - in his mind.

“An infant,” Hirrus said, feeling a bubbling rage growing in his chest.

Alric nodded, falling silent.

He left unsaid what could have happened to an infant in this situation.

Hirrus gritted his teeth.

They were out the other end of Mugport along the Hari Path in under a minute of having entered it, without being interrupted. Hirrus considered turning around and exploring the place, looking for answers. But he suspected he wasn’t going to find anything. Or, if he did, they wouldn’t be worth the delay.

Continuing up the Hari Path towards their goal, Hirrus found himself growing more and more agitated. They were unable to travel more than twenty minutes at a stretch without finding a small town, cluster of homes, or isolated farmhouse.

Every one of them was empty.

Some of them were like Mugport: empty but undamaged. Some of them were like Yenon: burnt and ruined.

But at every turn, there was no sign of what had happened to the people who lived there.

Every step of the way, whenever anything within striking distance of the road cast a shadow large enough for a human - or scaled monstrosity - to hide, Hirrus' sword was in his hand. But every time no foe presented itself, it only made him more certain that one was coming out of the next shadow.

Hirrus was not a subtle man. He lacked the capacity for guile. If Rumi - or any of his underlings or creations - were paying any attention, they knew he was here, and they knew he was coming.

So why weren’t they trying to stop him?

After dealing with the Last of the Strong assaulting him whenever he let his guard down, keeping his guard up now was turning out to be a disappointing frustration. It made the tension grow with every uneventful step. There weren’t even other adventurers. No pets. No livestock. Nothing.

“I think this is a good sign,” Alric ventured after about an hour of walking past eerily vacant buildings, careful to wait for a moment when there were none in view to draw Hirrus' undivided attention. “If Rumi was churning out Awakened by the bucket, we’d be up to our necks in them defending his ass, right? He must be failing, and miserably, too. I mean, we’ve passed what, a hundred people worth of homes? Two hundred? And only one attacker? That’s a terrible hit rate. And if he’s killed them, that’s actually good.”

Hirrus shot a wordless glare at Alric at that.

“N-no, I mean...” Alric started to stammer wordlessly, then swallowed to get himself under control. “It’s not good. But it’s… Better? If they’re all dead, they’ll respawn next week just fine. They aren’t going to be erased, even if we fail. Right? That’s… Better than a big strip of countryside suddenly snapped to dust at an idiot’s whim.”

“They’re not all dying,” Hirrus said, gritting his teeth as he finally breached the core of the issue. The central component of his anxiety. “Most of them are alive.”

“How do you know?” Alric asked. “You can’t, like, see it, right?”

Hirrus held up a hand. About a hundred yards off the Hari Path there was a big farmhouse. There was a barn behind it, and a big pile of hay near the door, pitchforks still sticking out of it.

He had been content to let the others pass by, but he had a point to make now.

Even if he found no answers on what Rumi was doing, he could educate Alric on how dire the situation was.

The farmhouse was larger than Hirrus had expected. It had room enough for about a dozen people to live comfortably, though most of it was haphazardly constructed. He imagined that the occupants had expanded it as their family grew - or as they hired more farmhands who needed quarters.

There were signs that whatever had emptied the place had happened unexpectedly. The stove’s firebox was empty but for ash, and a pot upon it had the bottom burned through, having been left abandoned. In a back room there was the beginnings of a handmade table in the middle of the floor, surrounded by simple carpentry tools. And, as they had seen from the main road, there were signs by the barn that a group had been pitching hay.

What Hirrus sought was behind the barn, over a small hilltop rise. A simple stick fence cordoned off a family graveyard, where many weathered stones stood. These old stones were marked with names and epitaphs, some of them obscured by the ravages of time, or thick green moss climbing up their faces.

The most recent marked stone read:

Joan Hamm

Friend to Many. Stranger to None.

The moss climbing up that stone hadn’t quite reached the words yet, but it appeared to have stood here for years. Next to it was a single blank gravestone, unmarked by words or epitaph.

“This is how I know,” Hirrus said, gesturing at the blank stone. “This is where they would be buried if they died. The decision trees of their loved ones would direct them to bring the body here to be laid to rest. That would cause the stone to be marked with name and epitaph. Only one dead…” he trailed off, pointing to the empty space next to the unmarked stone, where no other unfinished monuments stood. “No others. Do you think that big farmhouse, with all its rooms, only held one soul?”

“Where-” Alric said, stopping and lowering his voice, presumably out of respect for the dead buried here. “Where is the body, then?”

“Not here,” Hirrus said. He added, darkly: “and the only reason their loved ones wouldn’t bury them here is if, for some reason, their decision tree could no longer direct them to.”

Alric’s eyes widened as the man shuddered with fear. At last, he understood what was making Hirrus so anxious, and why every empty town was another spike of fear in his heart.

“How many?” Alric asked, turning away from the gravestones, clearly trying to urge Hirrus to leave.

Hirrus said nothing, and only stared at the blank grave marker. Perhaps if he stood here long enough, another one would appear next to it. Some sign that the worst wasn’t happening.

Perhaps Rumi had found a way to gather all the people together. Maybe one of his few successes was a guard, allowing him to exercise authority and arrest the people of these towns, imprisoning them somewhere.

Or perhaps he was having more success than even GM Dave feared.

“Nevermind. Forget I asked. I don’t want to know,” Alric said, stopping at the cemetery gate. “I want to get moving again. I want this to be over.”

“You’re not alone in that,” Hirrus said, trying to push down the hollow feeling in his chest as he turned away. “Every minute that passes invites some new disaster.”

Hirrus just hoped he’d be able to deal with them all.