The pungent scent of death permeates through the folds of the scavenging traveler’s mask, causing a nasty ball of sickness to form in the middle of her throat. She knows that if she was to remove the cloth from her face, the stench alone would burn the hairs from her nose. It’s truly awful what happens to a body once a soul is no longer present.

How some people find the circle of life endearing and beautiful is beyond her.

Pushing past the currents of water threatening to fall from her eyes, she begins to scout through the wreckage of war. Her teeth rub together as she searches through what remains of the trouser pockets of men and women that would never walk on the mortal plane again, careful not to let any of her skin touch theirs. She doesn’t find much, besides a coin or two and a few tiny portraits of loved ones. When she comes across a fallen soldier with feet that look to be the same size as her own, she crouches down and begins to untie her laces.

The woman doesn’t want to look at the soldier’s face, but she can’t help it. Her startlingly vibrant eyes travel up, while her hands continue to work, and she sees that the corpse lying before her was beautiful in a Trindian kind of way. All Trindians that she had ever seen, which is few, had looked the same to her though. They were tall and thickly built with hair the color of raspberries and eyes wider than a throwing disk.

While they aren’t exactly her preferred cup of tea, she can still see the beauty in the sharp curve of their jaws and their brightly colored hair. As the scavenger finally manages to slide the shoes off the Trindian’s feet, she feels a tingling in the back of her head. A groan immediately falls from her lips. She stands and stomps, her boot digging into the wet ground beneath her. “Why did I have to look?” She grumbles, angry at herself.

There’s a certain kind of energy that arises when she takes in another’s face. It transfers between meeting eyes like smoke fanning under a door. This power seems to always invite the ghosts of their past and present out to play. She’d rather not though. “Why not?” Sighing, she turns to face the voice.

Unsurprisingly, the spirit of the broken Trindian stands before her. Throwing her hands up in the air, she asks, “What?! You got some kind of unfinished business, moony?” Though the question is a useless one. The ghost wouldn’t be here disturbing her search if it didn’t have ties to the earth. All spirits are the same, selfish little pricks that infringe on the lives of the living. Though, she supposes that since the woman had died on a battlefield, she should feel some kind of obligation to help her, shouldn’t she?

Well, the soldier hadn’t been fighting for her freedom. In fact, the woman would wager that the spirit had been battling for the exact opposite, not that she thinks it was high enough in the chain of command to know that. They were probably told that their presence on her island was needed, that it was imperative for the safety of their nation and her own.

But the truth of the matter is that this little soldier died for nothing. The war the empress of Velshlind wages with Trind is one born of selfishness, but really… aren’t they all. Trind fights because they feel that’s the only option they have, and the two stupid nations have brought their war to her door.

The only fortunate thing to happen is that the Trindians and the Velish soldiers are too scared of the secrets hidden within her lands to venture any further inland.

She was surprised they made it to the coasts at all. Her people should have had preventative measures against foreign invasions, but she’s no longer privy to information regarding the state of the nations, so she can’t find out why the intrusion was allowed.

The spirit scoffs at her. Then she walks around, so that her view of her corpse is no longer obscured. “I can’t believe we lost,” She whispers, her voice grainy. The scavenger’s eyes roll. Of course they lost. Everyone, even the people of her island, knows that the Trindians are fighting a lost cause. The empress of Velshlind has an army of smazers. If she wants to take the Kingdom of Trind, she will. It’s only a matter of time.

And before long, the empress will come for her people too. If this wasteland proves anything, it’s that she has already started plotting.

Bending down, she snatches up her new shoes and tosses them into the pack that’s strapped securely at her back. The shoes will need to be washed and dried before she can put them on. She’ll need all traces of the fallen soldier gone before any part of her skin makes contact with the rough and worn leather. Around corpse’s neck, the woman spots something shiny, so she snatches it as well. “Hey! What are you doing?! That’s mine,” The spirit screeches.

It receives a scowl in response.

"And just what're you going to do with a necklace, moony? Hate to break it to you, but you're dead." The woman wipes at her nose through her mask as she inspects the necklace. The band was made of a rather brittle leather, which explains why it broke so easily, but the pendant, which is still intact, is a medium-sized moon that’s been forged from some type of alloy. She should definitely be able to get a pretty piece of silver for it, if she lies well enough.

As she attempts to pry the locket open, the spirit takes a swipe at her. It stumbles, stunned, as its hand travels through the thief’s. It usually takes the dead bastards a good year or two to really grasp the fact that they’ll never touch anything again. You know… because they’re dead bastards. The traveler grins. Waving the necklace in the air, she lets out a hearty laugh. “Good luck with your unfinished business, moony. I’ve got to run now.”

The spirit bares her teeth at the woman, but there really isn’t much else that it can do. It’ll be tied to its body until it finds a way to pass through the veil separating life and death, and with all that hate growing it, it’s likely that it never will. Eventually, it’ll become filled with so much grief and anguish that it’ll lose the knowledge of its past life, morphing into a bogey, forced to forever live in a world where no one sees it.

Ha!

She’ll be long gone by then though.

It was some real luck that had led the scavenging woman to the deserted battlefield just before it became riddled with the bastards. Humming, she absentmindedly rubs at the back of her arm as she continues to search the land. Bodies, some torn grotesquely by forces unknown to her and others burnt to ashes, litter the ground. What was once the beginnings of a beautiful new grassland was charred and tarnished in what could have been a matter of minutes.

It’s a shame.

If what she hears of the other continents is true, this world could truly use a little more greenery.

As she passes over a small hill, the necklace twirling around her index finger, she spots something moving in the distance. Squinting, she peers closer. “There’s no way that that’s a living person.” She shades her eyes despite the fact that this side of the world won’t be seeing the sun for at least another two months. Just as she leans forward a head pops up to greet her.

The woman wastes no time with analyzing. Immediately she turns and makes a run for it. Even with the ground having been replaced with bodies, she’s stable and agile as she sprints, making sure to step only on the solid parts of the dead foreigners beneath her.

Flipping her hood up, she pumps her arms harder, her breath coming out so forcefully that her mask bulges and her chest aches with each passing beat of her heart. Her ears twitch at the sound of footsteps filling up what’s supposed to be silent air. This place was supposed to be deserted. The Velish army had decimated the Trindians and likely burned any camps nearby. Why would anyone be stupid enough to brave this graveyard, especially given that both armies had taken up residence on opposite sides of the coast?

Finally, she makes it to the other side of the hill, but it’s just empty plains for half a mile. If she runs straight for the forests, she’ll be leaving a trail straight to her home. There is no chance that she’s going to lead this psycho back to her home. Pushing just a little harder, she twists mid swing of her arms and slides low to the ground. Blood, ash, and mud coat her clothes and any exposed skin as she skids to a stop. She flattens herself so perfectly that any ordinary person would think that she was one of the fallen soldiers.

Because she now faces opposite of the direction she was running, she can see her pursuer as he reaches the top of the hill. His eyes are the first thing that she takes notice of. Smazer. Damn. The entirety of his eyes are black, and from what she can see of his exposed skin, there’s a slight red tint to it.

But if she was having any doubts about his caste, all of them are put to rest as soon as a lock of his solid white hair falls from whatever he uses to hold it back from his face. They must have sent someone back to check for survivors. The Velish army is known to be thorough, especially the empress’ first regiment.

The man, standing tall, looks around with one hand on his hip and the other shading his eyes. Maybe the Velish Empire has sunshine at this time of the year.

He crouches low to the ground, his velvet cloak dragging in the dirt. The wanderer only has to wonder what he’s doing for a moment. His beady eyes search for her as he touches the palm of his uncovered hand to the ground. She doesn’t even have it in her to be disgusted with his obviously unsanitary actions. She just took the shoes off a dead person.

Though, she has the decency to wear gloves.

The man inhales and digs his fingers into someone’s remains. She’s not sure he even notices. The earth grows warm, and the man’s voice travels to the woman. Speaking in a dialect that most know, he whispers, “Got you.” Somehow, despite the fact that the woman can’t see his pupils, she knows that he’s now looking directly at her, and as their eyes connect, flashes of people best left decaying begin burrowing in her head.

She pounds her hand into the dirt, breaking their eye contact. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Shooting up, she drag’s her knife out of its little sheath and points it at him lazily. “Okay, you’ve got me buddy. What’re you going to do with me though. That’s the question.” The smazer looks from the woman to her tiny dagger. The blade couldn’t be more than two inches long.

He seems like he’s trying to hold in laughter, likely imagining she knows little about how to wield a weapon. It could also have to do with the size of her tool, it leaves little to be intimidated by.

The amono woman smiles and laughs a little as well. Hearing this, her pursuer’s shoulders lose a bit of tension, and he even takes a step towards her. “My name is-” She throws her dagger, watching as it doubles in length mid trip with a mere whisper falling from her lips. It impales his shoulder, dragging a whoop from the woman. Rushing him, her right hand instantly goes to the dagger.

They connect and he loses his balance, the added weigh causing him to pinwheel. The smazer is so busy crying about the knife wound that he doesn’t have a chance to block the punches to his face. She can’t stop herself from adding little sound affects with each heavily tossed fist.

It’s only when his nose goes all funny that the woman assumes she’s done enough damage to give herself a bit of time to get away.

Then she gets a thought.

This guy is a smazer. That means he has to have a bit of money on him, or at least something of worth that she can sell, right? He’s a direct solider of the empress, almost like a royal guard. His salary can’t be anything to sneeze at. She licks her lips at the thought. Pulling her dagger from his shoulder, she holds it to his neck. His breaths deepen. “Move and you’re done for beetle.” He doesn’t even bother nodding. Her smile grows.

She keeps her eyes on him as she runs her hands along his pockets. Grabbing a couple of pouches off him, she stands. The woman hurriedly stuffs them into her pack, careful to keep her eyes on the man beneath her. She doesn’t know the extent of his powers.

He could be one of those weird teleka-whatever smazers. That’s not something she should risk.

“Close your eyes and count to one hundred. If you open them before then, this knife goes into your head, beetle.” This time he does nod, and as soon as his eyes close, the woman turns to run.

She’s thinking about what he could possibly have hidden in these little pouches when she feels it. The air shifts.

Her head lifts until the tip of her cloth covered nose is pointing straight at the sky. The air around her goes warm and suddenly, she feels a deep pulsing pain in her arm. The woman’s ears ring as the sound of her bone crunching envelops her senses. The colors in the sky whirl as she spins and falls from the impact.

Gasping, the woman looks down.

Embedded in her arm is an arrow with fletching painted in the colors of the Velish army.

“Well… isn’t this just my luck,” She coughs out.