01.28.2016
Dalence turned from the courtyard and made her way out of the city gates the same way she’d come. The flock of crows had circled around and landed on the path outside the walls. Several birds picked through the debris. She startled the group again as she dropped the axe to the ground, and they took to the air. A couple crows dropped what they’d in their beaks, which she discovered to be dismembered toes. They were grey and waxy in the strong afternoon sunlight. A shiver ran down her spine and she ran up the path, away from the silent, empty, dead city behind her.
She kept running, sweating like mad, and the knapsack hitting against her back, until she reached the treeline. She entered into the scrubby forest here and continued along at a walking pace and brought the waterskins out of her pack to wash away her thirst.
She couldn’t help but think of all the thousands of people who had lived in Bansuth. And there were at least a couple smaller cities out on the Far Finger, right? Had they also been taken? The initial fear faded as she huffed and puffed up the steep mountain trail. And then she settled into thoughts of what she’d tell people when she got back.
Should she go straight into town? Should she warn the observers on the mountain first? What is the next step after that? Was there even anything to do? She pondered these as she continued along for several more miles. A group of clouds moved in from the ocean beyond the finger and broke the heat with their rain drops. A stream ran down the middle of the path and her shoes muddied.
Dalence decided as she neared the top of the mountain pass, the Splitskin, that she’d tell the group on the mountain first. They deserved to know the danger of the wolf they observed. And perhaps they’d give advance warning if the wolf made a move on the planet again.
The rain broke in the early evening as she scrambled up a boulder field and then more scree. She wasn’t following the way she had come down earlier, but she was making her was up as near to a straight line as she could. And when she got back to the campsite, she sat for a few minutes to catch her breath and thoughts before she told of her discovery of a ruined Bansuth.