The shivers never went away, no matter how far away I got. Maybe it's because I had a reminder of the encounter with me with no way to remove it. Each thought that strayed to what happened last night reminded me of the unsettling feeling of wrongness, so I wrangled my attention and thought only about the steps I need to take right now.

I walked for what must have been hours before the sun peeked from beyond the horizon. The warm touch of sunlight was a wondrous thing after what happened - especially when the dawn allowed me to finally feel safe enough to slow down my marching pace. Surely the thing is long gone by now. My back shivered again as I thought about the creature and I no longer felt as safe as before.

But a moment later a sound drew me out of my thoughts - a distant scream, somewhere from further in the plains off the road. I briefly considered just ignoring it but... I was also curious what 'caused it. If something bad was happening over there, maybe I could help? Worst come to worst it should be easy enough to just not reveal that I snuck up on whatever was going on there and go back to the road.

So I did something I've been very good at for the longest time - I ran - and let the rush help me stay awake. Definitely not because I didn't want to let my mind wander on this lonesome road, not at all. Just being a good person and running towards what I assume is trouble. As any reasonable person would. Obviously. Duh.

----------------------------------------

Fifteen minutes later the source of the screaming was clear - a battlefield littered with corpses of men and monster alike. At a quick glance I counted about four dead humans and as many monsters. Nothing was moving, so I cautiously approached and looked over the bodies. The humans all wore simple leather armor painted with red and yellow colors. 'Likely a merc group.' The beasts on the other hand were hardly uniform - one was a thing vaguely shaped like an oversized skeleton of a babe with the skull the size of its own body. 'Broken bones. Hammers? Some other heavy weapon?' None of the slain mercs used hammers - swords and boards laid on the ground near them. Second monster was... I wasn't quite sure how to even describe it. A blob of flesh with jaws all over. It laid still, pinned to the ground by a spear. Bile rose in my throat at the sheer unnatural ugliness of the thing and I quickly turned away, focusing on finding something immediately useful over inspecting the dead.

A trail of blood soon revealed itself to me and I followed. I wasn't an expert tracker, but even I could tell that the grass has been stomped on by at least a few pairs of boots. I couldn't see any tracks that didn't look like shoes however. 'Did they win the battle? Why run away and leave their comrades to rot if they won?' I wondered, but couldn't think of an answer. So I followed, cautious, as I felt that things were about to become more complicated.

----------------------------------------

Credit where credit is due, the mercs were tough. It took me thirty minutes of pursuit before I finally caught a glimpse of them, and I wasn't exactly taking it slow. There were four of them, one was laid against a tree whilst another tended to a wound in the man's leg. Two more stood guard, one with a hammer, the other with a crossbow. I couldn't even get within a few hundred meters before I was spotted and pointed at. Admittedly I wasn't exactly trying to hide either.

They let me get close enough to where neither of us would have to shout too loud before the one with the crossbow finally ordered me to stop. Of course I obeyed. Don't want to get pierced by a bolt. "Who the hell are you and why are you here?" Straight to the point it seems. He looked exhausted and his aim wasn't truly steady - I honestly felt similar. "Malinka. Heard screaming, wanted to help." I answered as concisely as I could. Crossbow guy and Hammer man had a very brief hushed discussion after which the crossbow came down and I was allowed to join them.

At least I wasn't alone anymore.

----------------------------------------

"Malinka." Hammer guy nodded to me as I got close. I saw his eyes shift up and down as he took in my equipment. "Some sort of solo merc? No, too young. Someone aspiring to be a hero then." He concluded and shook his head. "Whatever, not my business. Name's Thomas." He offered me his hand and I accepted. He was.. fairly attractive despite what looked to be a pile of dirt covering half of his gear. Short brown hair, a stubble of a beard - likely from not having shaving supplies outside of wherever their base is.

"Not sure what possessed you to move towards a battle somewhere off the beaten path, but you won't hear me complaining about having another sword on hand." Thomas ranted as he lead me closer to the wounded and his caretaker. Now that I was up close I could finally see that the man was unconscious and his leg was caved in, with pieces of bone jutting out. 'Probably for the best that he's unconscious.' The one who was taking care of him curiously was a woman. Dave always maintained that a woman in the group would 'disrupt the unit cohesion' too much and other bullshit. Always thought that was a load of crap.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Long story short, we've got a weeper pack on our hands." Unbidden, a memory of David lecturing me about the types of dangers his group had to fend off around Ravensbrook reminds me what exactly he's talking about.

"Common type of torments, mindless and thus cannot be reasoned with. Reckless fighters, don't care much for their own lives but dangerous and lethal. Named so because of the unsettling noises they make. Be mindful and focus on what is real and what is not when fighting them, as their noises distort your mind, driving men to off themselves before the weepers get to do it for them." I rattle off Dave's lecture as if this was a test.

Thomas gives me a nod in response. "If nothing else, you sure know your theory. We engaged a large pack of seven when one of ours-" He nods to the currently unconscious man being tended to. "-lost it. Our frontline collapsed soon after as he attacked us. Had to break his leg before I managed to finally knock him out. Luckily the remaining weepers were too slow to keep up and soon lost interest." His voice was professional, detached from the situation, but his fist shaking from being held so tight told me a different story.

I glanced over at the wounded man. His skin was pale and his breathing shallow. My instincts told me he wasn't long for this world, but the medic didn't seem to share my sentiment. Thomas's voice drew my attention back again. "This is your chance to leave. You know the stakes. We can't move without losing yet another of our own. At least that's was Liz told me. And weepers like to come back to finish the job they started until either you or them are done for."

I considered my options - stay and fight, or leave to live another day. An image of a bone white head with a fracture in reality for a face flashed in my mind and I shivered. I didn't want to be alone, not with that thing haunting me whenever I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and held it inside my lungs for a spell. 'One, two, three.' I counted in my head before breathing out.

"No one left behind." I make my choice and Thomas lets out a sigh of relief.

----------------------------------------

I took the time to set up a campfire to keep everyone warm - especially the wounded guy. His breathing was still shallow but he was alive. Thomas sat down next to the campfire as soon as it was burning and started cleaning his hammer. Liz - Elizabeth? - hang a pot with water over it to boil it, likely to clean the wounded guy's wounds and crossbow guy still stood guard with his crossbow.

"Right." Thomas started speaking. "We need a basic battle plan. Marcel's a deadeye." Most common powers had short hand nicknames. Deadeye meant that he would always hit where he aimed. While this almost always guaranteed a hit, sometimes the thing the Deadeye aimed at was too fast and outran the bolt or arrow anyway. A good deadeye accounted for travel time of their projectile. "So he'll cover us from the back."

"Liz is our scout." Another shorthand. Scout, someone who's senses were incredibly sharp. David said that scouts could hear a pin drop in a barfight. Liz sat down by the fire and gave me a smile. "Though I'm mostly here to keep these idiots alive. Nice to see another gal taking up the fight." I returned the gesture.

"And I'm a null." Thomas finally pointed to himself. Null, a little bit of a misleading nickname. It didn't mean that the person had no power, rather that the power was not useful. "Though if you have some apples I can tell you exactly how ripe they are though." He chuckled. "What about you?"

I felt the attention of the duo shift to me. "Consider me a null please as I don't know what my power does. But I'm handy with a sword and dagger." Thomas nodded at me and started looking through his backpack. "Bit unusual to not figure it out by now, but whatever, none of my business. The guy on the floor is Jay. He's a survivor, though it clearly didn't help him." Survivor. David's power. One second of time stretched to infinity to let you find some way to survive when your life is in danger.

A moment later he sighed and gave up on searching through his backpack. "No alcohol." I heard him curse under his breath and couldn't help but smirk at how he reminded me of Dave. "Right, whatever. Overall, we're currently down to two fighters, a deadeye and a scout, and we have to defend a location with no fortifications. To put it simply, if we're surrounded we're fucked. The three of us got a decent amount of practice together and can cover each other's backs. So, the best I can think of is that we three hold the line, and you deal with anything coming from the side."

He pulls a stick from the fire and waves it around to extinguish it. Then he starts drawing a plan in the dirt. "There were three that we managed to lose. At least one should die to Marcel's bolts on approach, meaning me and Liz have to tango with two. If that's all that will come, your job is to flank them, and kill them. If there'll be another, you're gonna have to handle that yourself."

Something about that plan bothered me as I inspected the simple sketch of several circles with letters in them denoting where everyone should generally be relative to the enemy. "Any questions?" Thomas looked at me expectantly.

"Yeah, what if there's more than that?" I asked and received only a shrug in return.

"Then we're already dead." He replied, and I felt a the nagging feeling at the back of my mind intensify. Maybe these three aren't entirely sane either.