While never accustomed to death, I was not a stranger to it. I had my fair share of encounters throughout life of the raw death; the death that is unkempt, wild, natural, where a person’s soul is stolen away without warning. No, probably more than my fair share. I watched a man die of a heart attack in his office. That had been interesting. Unpleasant. Another instance was when a woman fell off a building. She was foolishly standing on the edge one moment. Wind came. She vanished. I made the mistake of looking down at the remains that day.

There were a few others times… but by far the most memorable was when I was bleeding, in pain, and shell-shocked from a crash. My head pounded. My vision spun like a pinwheel in a hurricane. I looked to my fiance to see if she was alright… and there she was, her beautiful blonde curls sticking to the blood running down her face. Her eyes were open; sapphire diamonds I so loved. They looked at me. Looked through me. The spark of life was not in them.

In that nightmarish moment, I realized how fragile life truly was.

That same thought bubbled in my mind as I looked over the village of Lonely Briar. Wretched, smoldering piles of corpses adorning the place as if gems upon a crown. Sickening and grotesque assortments in varying states of decay and decapitation, all made of the same material: flesh, bones.

I really shivered when I looked to a pile close by. A woman’s hand reached out from under the pile. Her nails were red from clawing the ground, trying to dig her way out from the entrapment. Desperately. She had to have been trying for a while. The ground her hand could reach was torn asunder from her attempts. But… but now, that hand was still. Frozen in time. She had tried. And failed.

Now she was fuel for the fire. Nothing more. Just like the rest of Lonely Briar’s populace.

Pure shock kept me sane. The back of my throat scratched itself, trying to coax me to wretch up my meager breakfast. Thankfully, a quick swallow of the putrid air kept my food in my stomach. But I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream out. I wanted to run. To cover my eyes. To forget that I was alive. One thing kept me there, however; standing strong, though a lie it was.

Ivy. She clung to my arm as she shivered. Her face stayed hidden in my shoulder.

I knew I couldn’t just take off. Couldn’t show my sickness. My terror. If I wasn’t strong as her new summoner… then she would suffer. The odd protective instinct the contract had built stayed the test. I wouldn’t let her see me cry. Or run. I was Chaon now. Her summoner… I was going to be strong. I was going to hide my humanity.

Filling my lungs with a hearty breath of the roasting flesh, I eased my emotions away. I locked them deep inside me. The deepest I could manage. I tossed the key.

‘Mannequins sure stink…’ I told myself, sickly chuckling internally. I took another heavy breath to further whip my breaking heart. ‘Nothing like burning plastic to wake you up in the morning.’

My arm calmly wrapped around her shoulders as I guided her toward the West side of the clearing. The wind was coming from that direction. If I moved upwind, the smoke wouldn’t incessantly assault us. I had to force myself to walk calmly, even though I wanted to dash to the fresh air.

After a painful minute of walking, my lungs filled with clean air of the forest. I breathed deeply of it. It tasted sweet.

A crude bench sat facing a small flower garden. Though the flower garden was trampled now… the bench was still nice. Guiding Ivy to it, I sat her down there and placed Ditto on her lap for company. I pet her head.

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to see what happened…” I said slowly to ensure my voice didn’t crack. Ivy just nodded groggily. The smoke had done her no favors, being a plant. And the horror even stilled her.

With a final comforting pat, I turned. I walked into the grave.

After all, there were supplies to gain. Perhaps clues to unraveling what had happened. Maybe survivors… though I doubted it.

Passing by several more piles on my way toward the village square, my eyes fell on one of the piles containing the children. From toddler to preteen.

I froze for a second as my eyes stared into a young boy’s. I dashed behind the nearest standing wall, out of Ivy’s sight. My hand covered my mouth. Tears flowed. I haggardly fought back a choking sob mixed with the desire to heave. Emotions tore through me like the smoke through my lungs. But I fought them. I pushed them back into the dark recesses of myself. A sickening battle it was. My humanity wanted to weep. But I wouldn’t let it.

Bent over, I stayed there for a spell, thinking. Regaining my composure. I finally wiped the tears with my sleeve and stood.

I continued walking without batting an eyelash.

I surveyed the village. It had once held a couple hundred, at least. The building were primarily log cabins. All made of wood. Roughly hewn, but operable, sturdy, and quaint. They dotted the large clearing with a focus on the main road leading off into the forest westward. The further from the road, the more haphazard the placement of the cabins became.

Many had gardens nestled to their sides or rears, yielding wheat, herbs, and some grains I had never seen before. There were chicken coops as well; though their residences were also slaughtered. And small pens with larger, fatter birds that looked akin to plump turkeys, but were far too purple and brown for the turkeys of my old world. Their corpses tempted me, begging to be investigated… but I had more pressing matters than learning about some new type of bird.

However, though they had their farms and fowl, it was obvious the village didn’t focus on it. They had to have some other reason to be so deep in the forest. I guessed foresting… and when I reached the main square of the village, I spied the remains of a sawmill sitting near the east edge of the clearing. Piles of logs waited to be cut. They were going to be waiting a long time.

Ignoring the broken furniture, glass shards, and occasional severed limb scattered about, I walked over to what looked like the store. The two story, wider cabin had two larger windows, currently shattered, and within the ruins I spied piles of dumped wheat, sugar, and plenty of broken supplies and items.

One shimmering object embedded in the front wall caught my eye. A sword. I walked up to it, my footsteps sounding with crackling glass.

I grabbed the grip and tugged. It held stubbornly. I tried again, using both hands and with a little crunch, the wood gave way and released.

It was a fine sword, from what I could tell. The edge was pretty sharp. The blade was polished, straight, and sturdy. The balance… felt okay, though I had never held a sword before, so I was just going off of what I thought felt right. Its design was basic. Ugly. The type of sword a poor village blacksmith would create… but just because something was unattractive didn’t mean it wasn’t useful.

Giving it a test swing, I nodded, “A nice bastard sword… at least I think that’s what you are.” I slipped the blade into the sheath that once held the staff. I would need to get a real sheath for it, but for now it would do.

I looked around the shop’s husk for a little while to see if I could find anything else useful. I ran into a few Crysts. A hammer. Even a perfectly nice pillow. Everything else was destroyed with a vengeance.

“And if I can just find money literally lying on the ground… with everything of value destroyed…” I pocketed the Crysts, pondering what could have been the incentive behind the attack. “Definitely not thieves or raiders. They would have stolen instead of destroyed… so this was a slaughter for the sake of slaughter alone.”

I looked toward the closest piles of corpses. I didn’t want to… but I had to if I wanted answers. Taking a few rapid breaths, I walked up to it. A sickly sticky aura of heat surrounded it and accosted me the moment I drew close. I quickly hid my mouth under my tunic’s hem. It helped. A little.

Squinting, I moved closer. This one was definitely for men. Young men… twenties to thirties, I guessed. Bloody cuts scarred the shirts, arms, and skulls of those not burnt. It had definitely been a nasty scene… I was suddenly relieved that I had gotten lost the day before. The previous day had not been a pleasant one for Lonely Briar.

Beside the cuts, I noticed the corpses were rather thin. Not from starvation… though a few were definitely malnourished… it was more like they were partly husks.

‘Why are they so thin… they should begin to bloat a little at least… though that takes days…’ I pulled out my sword and lightly tapped one of the arms. It was stiff. Rigor mortis had set in… but the fluids of the arm were oddly missing. Without circulation it should have been easy to see. I knew it from the crime shows I favored…

But there was no doubt. Their skin was stretched too much. There was enough fluid there for the fats and skin, but the blood was gone.

Looking to the other bodies I saw they were all in the same state. It was as though they were all anemic. ‘Deathly anemic.’ One of the bodies had the same prongs on his neck that the hunters had. Standing, I walked around the pile to try and find other necks… and the few that were still intact enough, I could see the wounds there.

I quickly hurried away to breathe and think. I walked near to the other piles. Knowing what to look for, I could see all the bodies shared a similar fate. They had all been drained. No… bled.

A sickening feeling rose from the pit of my stomach. “Just like how the Alraune drain their victims… these people were…” A horrid thought came to mind. ‘Had this been a slaughter… or…’ I said the words slowly, not wanting to believe it. “…a harvest?”