I was glad to have my leathers.

Harvesting the zombies' hearts was a messy job. I had seen what happened to apprentices who weren’t careful. The fresh screams kept my hands steady and as clean as I could keep them.

The leather kept the blood from getting on my skin. They would have to be cleaned, but at least I wouldn’t get infected. For that I was thankful.

I’ve cut into more zombies than I can remember and each one of them is different. Depending on the age, sometimes there was no blood at all. These bodies were fresh, they hadn’t been turned that long ago.

I finished cutting the hearts out of the zombies and put the stinking organs into the bag. Once we got back to the fortress, the hearts would be cleaned and the heartstones would be collected.

The bodies had to be taken care of. There wasn’t much life outside the walls, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

I pulled the bodies into the cave. The human looked out of place beside the mangled zombies. She hadn’t been infected long enough to have a stone in her heart. I covered her with a blanket. It seemed like the least I could do for her.

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The pieces of the stupid man I dumped around the body of the headless Touched. The heart of a Touched didn’t hold a heartstone, so there was no reason to maim her body. It was also considered irreverent. After the trials, one of three things could happen; the apprentice would accept the magic and become a Bokor, reject the magic and become Touched or be killed by the magic and turn into a zombie. Since Touched could function for a time like a normal human, many were allowed to live in the fortress. It was considered the last mercy for failures. Plus, it kept them from running off and making nests like this one had.

“Are you finished?” Master Bran’s voice boomed inside the cave.

I turned around and nodded, “Yes sir!”

I scrambled out of the cave. A fireball streaked over my shoulder.

Flames erupted out of the cave, engulfing everything inside.

The heat washed over me. I breathed out and clamped my lips shut. The fire washed over me, eating every drop of zombie blood.

I resisted the urge to gasp. This wasn’t the first time that my master had used fire to cleanse the blood. It served a dual purpose, eradicating the infected blood and training an apprentice’s focus.

The runes on my master’s face dimmed as the fire subsided. I gulped in the hot air around me, relieving the burning in my lungs. It smelled of ash, but that was better than the stink of the cave.

“Where are the hearts?” My master demanded.

I held out the bag.

He snatched the bag and looked inside. Content that I had done an acceptable job, he threw the sack over his shoulder, “Let’s get out of this dump.”