Deep in a dark, emerald green forest, footsteps can be heard. A girl is walking slowly, but steadily along an ancient path, rough cobblestone overgrown by centuries of moss and foliage. Tree branches try to stab the old, musky overcoat she is wearing, but she easily pushes them aside. She can take it easy, at least for the moment. After all, her pursuers have met an untiemly end back in that old church.
She clutches her chest, still feeling that foreign power attached to her soul, while she listens to the eerie sounds of strange animals echoing through the wilds. She should be scared, because bandits are not the only dangerous things living in this dark realm. But her fear has been eaten away, fueling the new fire that is growing inside her.
After what seems like an eternity to her, but must not have been much longer than a few hours, she reaches her destination. With the sun slowly setting in the distance, yet still miles above the horizon, a gruesome scene unfolds in front of her.
Where once stood a peaceful village, giving home to a few hundred people and surrounded by strong, wooden palisades and makeshift fields, now there are only charred ruins remaining, mixed in with the occasional corpse, some of them missing their limbs, some of them missing their heads. Others are just an unrecognizable mess.
Free of fear, yet full of sorrow, she strides barefoot through the remains, wooden splinters and bone fragments pushing through her soles. The pain gnaws at her, yet she heeds it no mind, as the sight in front of her fills her being.
The ruins of a calm life, of a stable future. The ashes of hopes and dreams, of a possible life well lived. A landfill full of wasted potential, charred and burnt away. A few tiny arms are poking out of the remnants of a small school building, desperately grasping for a future that has been denied to them.
Razed barns, forcibly deprived of their contents, litter the path she takes, the path she used to take everyday until just a day ago, scenes of happiness and contentment playing in her head as she threads along what is now nothing more than a crude cemetery.
She remembers the cute, muscular boy from across the road, who would always smile at her whenever she went out to milk the cows, the cute, innocent flirting when they were bringing in the harvest She used to imagine a future at his side, sometimes laying awake at night, longing for his strong and secure arms who could lift an entire cart load of produce, yet were always so gentle with the piglets.
Now those arms are burnt to the bone, somewhere in what remains of this village, clutching a pitchfork in a futile attempt at saving those who are already lost, succumbed to the tide of bandits and outlaws who saw this peaceful refuge as nothing more than a pantry free for the taking.
Lastly, the girl stood in front of the remains of her childhood, falling to her knees once again as her eyes fall upon the remains of the most important people in her life.
The corpse of her father, haphazardly thrown to the side, mutilated in a bloodlusting act of sadistic hedonism, the usual comforting, friendly face contorted with fear and pain and worry and sorrow, a sight to make any daughter break.
The corpse of her mother, ravished and broken by lustful bandits, who have experience in this form of criminality, her once beatutiful face torn apart by blades, her beautiful dress that she wore only on special occasions like her daughter's birthday, a beautiful sky blue robe with frills flowing in the wind, now only laying in tatters in a ditch somewhere, leaving the naked corpse behind without decency, and leaving leaking holes open for everyone to see.
The entirety of the pain of the world comes crashing down at once as the girl realizes the cruelty that man can bring upon another. Grief and sorrow flow into her and paralyze her, and she starts crying, mourning for the loss of her emotional innocence, of the loss of her family, her hopes, her dreams, her plans for the future.
Her life.
She might aswell have died alongside them. She never should've snuck out to find some sweet berries this morning. If she didn't, maybe she would've been spared the pain she feels right now, lying dead and disfigured alongside her parents.
Sure, it might've been painful for a while, but suffering for a while with a certain end in sight just seems more amenable to her than living with this feeling of grief and sorrow and brokenness she feels right now for forever.
And something stirs inside of her. Something deep in her soul, or rather, something that is attached to her soul.
It asked, no, it demanded those feelings of pain and sorrow, a primal sort of hunger emanating from it. And if this thing wishes to have what she does not wish to have, what does she have to lose? A simple decision for the good of both of them, really. So she does the only thing she is capable of doing right at this moment.
She takes all of those feelings, all of her mournings, and practically shoves it towards the ball of miasma clinging to her soul, practically enjoying the feeling as it sucks up all of the negativity and leaving her behind with a clear head.
Now, at last, she can never feel sorrow anymore. She pushed everything into it, the desire to never feel that way overwhelming her and forcing her to push every last ounce she has into the slowly solidifying part of a broken soul. And she feels it growing stronger, a strange kind of power fueling her with determination, with the desire to survive, to show the world that she will not break as easily as others might.
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She rises to her bare feet, patting off some of the ash that has collected on her musky overcoat. She used to have better clothes, but those all burned down along with the entirety of the village. Even looking for shoes is pointless, as the only thing in her vicinity that survived the inferno is evidently an old shovel that miraculously landed in a puddle of mud where the pigs used to be.
Yet with a steady step, she goes over, picks up the old farming implement, and sets to work, digging two shallow graves. Even if she does not mourn for them anymore, burying them just feels like the right thing to do – to make sure that she has no regrets, nothing to look back to, nothing that could possibly force her to feel like that ever again, and after some more time, during which the sun comes very close to the horizon, two mounds of ashen-mixed dirt decorate the front yard of what remains of a once cozy farm cottage.
Jamming the shovel into the freshly-dug dirt next to the two graves, she turns her back to those charred and broken remains, and follows the sun out of the village and into the forest.
She knows that she has to go somewhere, but she can no longer ignore the pain in her soles. Now that she is no longer overcome with fear and grief, the multiple lacerations in her feet make themselves annoyingly apparent. Most cuts have already scabbed over, but new ones open up with every step on sharp stones and debris she takes.
While there are surely no usable boots left in this burnt tomb, at least none that are easily available to her knowledge, she does know of a place where she stashed an extra pair once, and with a bit of luck, they might even still fit her.
Steadily, she makes her way through the forest, this time not along an ancient, long forgotten path, but rather directly through the underbrush, along a path only she and her friends knew of. Well, now only she, she supposes, seeing as everyone she knew is now nothing more than an unfeeling, unthinking corpse. She does not linger on that thought for very long, focusing on finding the holes in the foliage she discovered ages ago and kept open from time to time is already taking a toll on her concentration. It has been quite a while since she last went this way, so many of the previously obvious passages have long since overgrown with thorny plants and other wild flora.
Nevertheless, she manages to reach her destination before the sun completely sets, and now she stands before a tree much bigger than those around it, with a trunk easily matching what remains of her house in terms of footprint.
This enormous tree is being supported by an amalgamation of roots and underbrush at it's base, rising and lowering out of the dirt in waves and forming a protective barrier over the soil close to the base.
This is where her little secret base is, where she used to play with the best friends of the village. Together they dug out a small cave between the roots, protected by rain thanks to the abundance in leaves, the natural shade of the tree and a few hardly noticeable scraps of tanned leather for the bigger holes.
Once, she lost her shoe in a mud puddle, and ever since then she kept a spare pair of cheap boots inside this cave, along with a nice collection of funny shaped stones, some crude wooden bows who have never been successfully used in their entire existence, and... is that a girl?
"S... Sana?" The girl hesitantly speaks out to the cowering mess of a person hiding inside her old base. After accepting that everyone she knew and loved being gone, seeing a somewhat familiar soul relatively alive and well makes her elated.
Slowly, a head turns around, covered in short, black hair, and one eye stares incredulously at her, the other one being covered by a curtain of her hair, making her look adorable if it weren't for the fear and stained tears covering her otherwise innocent and bubbly face.
"...Emela... is that... you...?" she slowly vocalizes, throat dry from hours of crying. Speaking was always kind of hard for her, now especially after what she's been through.
"Sana! Oh my, it IS really you! I am so happy to see you! Please, come out of here, I can't believe you are still okay!" The girl, Emela, practically jumped up and down in elation, completely ignoring the stinging in her soles, her thoughts entirely focused on the timid girl in front of her, questions and curiosity filling her mind.
If they both survived, how many other managed to get away aswell?
"Is it... safe...?" Sana speaks slowly, with a slight jitter in her voice, as if unsure of if she used the right words at all, and after a confirming nod from her... friend? Acquaintance?, she slowly crawls out of the dirty hole beneath the tree, and her gaze falls onto the setting sun. "...How long..."
Emela practically jumps at Sana's neck, hugging the remains of Sana's strength out of her. With them being so close, Emela can feel the fear and anxiety radiating off of the girl who just barely reaches to her chest in size.
That it is the first time in her life she is actually able to feel other people's emotions just completely escapes her mind. Instead, she instinctually reaches out with her newfound core, directing it to the fear that encapsules the timid girl currently being smothered by her hope, love and small chest.
The fragment of the broken soul immediately sets to work, immaterial tendrils reaching out of Emela's body and grasping for the cloud of fear. Yet it's sphere of influence is pitiful at best, so it can only slurp up some surface emotions.
Nevertheless, this small effort, combined with everything else going on, calms down the diminuitive girl tremendously, and she feels safe for the first time in... a while.
"It's getting dark", Emela said, her head looking at the forest around them which slowly loses it's light. "We should rest here for the night. After that, we need to go somewhere else. It's not good here, especially when it starts raining."
Emela's mind is running in survival mode. Every ounce of panic that could arise is quickly gobbled up by her core, leaving her with a lot of calm brainpower to assess the situation.
If they were to return to the church right now, they would not be able to reach it before nightfall, and they would run into the issue of not being able to navigate into the right direction. And even if they were to reach it in time, the church is currently in no state to provide decent shelter, with practically half it's roof missing, and the door being decayed to smithereens.
"Oh... okay...", Sana nods in agreement. She is still overwhelmed by the sudden energetic presence that pulled her out of her stupor, but she feels like she can trust this girl. They've known each other for ages, but Sana is just not the type of girl that is outgoing enough to have a lot of friends. Weirdly enough, at least to her, she was still included in a lot of group activities, like playing in the woods at the secret base, which is how she knew about this place.
Even after everyone else stopped coming, something about the calmness of this place kept drawing her in, and she ended up spending most of her time here anyways.
After covering up the entrance to the hole with a few choice branches, which still had some leaves on them, the two girls cuddled together in the cramped hole, with barely enough space to fit them both, and after the hardships of the day, they fall asleep with surprising speed.