“So how do we do this?” Fabien inquired.

“We already cleared out one path, so we’ll switch to the next one beside it. Once we reach Scholar’s Square through that path, we’ll take a left turn and follow the next street. We’ll be going back and forth using this method until we clear out all of the streets that connect into the square. The rest is up to the other teams.” Quentin explained.

“Let’s get going then,” the dark elf agreed with the plan. “This is going to take a few hours.”

The outlanders headed out following the same path they used to come here until the point where they were supposed to take a turn toward the alley. This time however they continued on the main street while checking each and every building one by one. When no one answered, they would look for possible open doors or windows to enter, most of the time only finding empty homes.

On a sad few occasions, they would find either undead commoners or corpses of people who starved to death after barricading themselves inside their homes. It took them more than an hour this time to reach Scholar’s Square and they did so without finding a single survivor.

“This is bad,” Sophie mumbled with her gaze cast down. “There were so many...”

“Don’t,” Amanda placed a hand on the sun elf’s shoulder. “Try not to think about it. We couldn’t have saved them, so don’t blame yourself.”

“Maybe,” Osmond spoke up. “You girls could sit this one out.”

“No,” Sophie shook her head in defiance. “I won’t let it get to me. We have to do this. There has to be survivors. I know it.”

“Should we check on sir Derris and Mary?” Valerie asked.

“Not yet,” Quentin stated. “We should at least clear out two more paths before stopping for a breather.”

The others could only nod as the paladin headed out without saying another word. His steps seemed heavier than before, his back casting a shadow that felt different this time around.

“Is he going to be alright?” Letty whispered to her sister as they lagged a bit behind.

“He needs time,” Regis answered after hearing the whisper. “This thing with the fake Khan hit him hard. Harder than it could have hit us.”

“Don’t worry little one,” Valerie smiled. “He’s a strong man. He’ll get through this.”

With the conversation ending in awkward silence the group continued with their quest to eliminate any undead presence from the streets. Most of the abominations they came across were low-level soldiers and commoners like the ones they fought many times before, and much to Sophie’s relief, halfway through their path, a voice answered their question after knocking on a two-story home door.

“What do you want?” A weak and raspy voice could be heard from the other side after they knocked on the door to ask for anyone being in there.

“We were are tasked with clearing out the streets of the fallen and to check for survivors,” Sophie answered. “Hopefully it will be safe to come out by the end of the day. Are you alright in there? Can you tell us how many of you survived in there?”

“What for,” the voice turned distrustful immediately. “So you could get in here and finish us off?”

“No,” the sun elf almost screamed at the accuser. “We were asked by captain Hyord to look for any survivors.”

“I don’t believe a word...” The man tried to speak again before he broke out in a coughing fit.

“Papa!” A frail and worried child’s voice appeared behind the door as soon as the coughing started.

“Are you alright in there,” Quentin spoke finally. “Do you need healing?”

“Water,” the child’s voice answered as the coughing lessened a bit. “We ran out of water two days ago.”

“We have some with us,” Valerie took off her knapsack to pull out her waterskin from it. “If you can open your window, you should be able to take it.”

“Don’t!” The man’s voice resounded in a much weaker way than before.

A moment later one of the side windowsills of the building begin to creak before opening up. A dirty faced little girl picked out with a scared expression. As soon as she noticed the infernal twins, her eyes went wide.

“Sorry Val,” Regis looked at the woman. “But I think it would better for Sophie to be the one to give her the water.”

Valerie nodded with a somewhat sour expression as she handed the waterskin over to Sophie. The sun elf then walked over to the window with slow steps, holding forward the water skin so the child could take it.

As soon as the tiny hands grabbed hold of the precious waterskin, she disappeared behind the window once again. A good minute later they could hear a relieved sigh from the other side of the door before the man finally spoke again.

“Thank you,” he said. “We were getting quite desperate in here.”

“Don’t mention it,” Fabien said as he patted his sister’s shoulder in hopes of cheering her up. “Are there only two of you in there?”

“Yes,” the short answer came. “We were just coming back from the market when the chaos broke out. I managed to barricade the door and we had enough food to last us for a while, but we ran out of water. You said that it will be safe to come out by nightfall?”

“Hopefully sooner,” Valerie shook off her dreary mood. “We’ll try to clear up the streets as fast as we can while finding as many survivors as possible.”

“May the Saints watch over you,” the man prayed. “We’ll stay here until news of the streets being safe come this way.”

“You do that,” Quentin nodded as he turned towards the street. “Let’s get going. We have plenty of houses to check along the way.”

They continued their search through that part of the street for another twenty minutes. On their way, two more homes turned out to have survivors inside, most people only asking for water and that someone would come back for them once the streets were safe to pass. As they reached the point of the street where the other mercenary team was supposed to end their search, Quentin drew his sword and scratched a mark on the door of one of the houses, making it obvious that they reached this far with their warband.

The group turned around and headed back to Scholars’ Square, only to take another left turn to clear out the next street. For the following two hours they repeated the same cycle of killing the undead and searching for survivors, finding nearly three dozen of them throughout the streets they cleared.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Most of their defeated enemies yielded little of value, so they found it better focus on finding survivors instead. Once they were finished with half of the area assigned to them, they headed over to the spell casters’ guild.

“Welcome back.” A cheerful voice greeted them as Mary came down from the stairs along with elder Derris when the outlanders enter the guild.

“We’ve seen you make your way around Scholars’ Square, coming and going from the different streets.” The old scholar noted.

“We were tasked by captain Hyord to clear this area of the fallen,” Quentin said. “We already went over half of the area and decided to take a short rest before continuing on.”

“I see,” the elderly man nodded. “Come then, have a seat and drink some tea.”

The group nodded as one and followed Derris and Mary into the mess hall of the guild. While Mary heated up some of the tea leftover from the morning, the others put down their weapons and took a seat.

“Did you run into many enemies so far?” The young woman asked.

“Not too much,” Osmond answered. “But enough to keep us busy. Luckily, they were all low ranked fallen.”

“We also found a lot of survivors.” Sophie said with a happy smile.

“I am glad to hear that,” Old Derris sighed relieved at the news as he received a cup from Mary. “Is everything alright in the inner town?”

“Things are slowly getting better from what I’ve seen,” Amanda stated. “I guess Letty healing the local Landwaker tree lowered the pressure on the people.”

“Not having to starve tends to do that.” Cruz noted.

“I believe that closing the outer gates gave some hope to the refugees,” Valerie said as she received her cup of tea. “Now we just have to clear out the remaining undead from East Fork and its surroundings.”

“I’m not sure we’ll be able to stay here that long.” The dark elf sighed.

“What do you mean?” Mary looked at the spell weaver with the rest of the group following.

“I know this sounds a bit sudden, but I think we should head out tomorrow or the day after that.”

“But there’s still so much to do,” Sophie argued. “There are people here that need our help and there are still lots of fallen around the town.”

“And they will be taken care of by the locals and the people that came over from Hunor,” Quentin finally joined into the conversation. “We have our own things to deal with and we need to do so fast.”

“But these people...”

“Sophie,” Osmond cleared his throat. “I know you want to help people and we did that yesterday and we will do so today as well, but we’re not in the Red Cross. We can’t just stay here forever to keep watch over them.”

“Os is right,” Cruz agreed after a sip of warm tea. “We have those fucking Argents on our heels. The longer we stay here, the more danger these people will be in. It’s best if we quickly help them secure the town and then be on our way.”

“I,” the young sun elf tried to argue but stopped herself. “I guess you’re right. It just doesn’t feel right to leave when they need our help.”

“They don’t,” Quentin stated. “Most of the groundwork had already been laid down regarding East Fork’s safety and the others will be able to take care of the rest.”

“Tomorrow then,” Osmond shared his opinion. “That should leave us with enough time for us to gather the necessary travelling supplies and for everyone to study any books they would need to. If we are to leave, then at least we should do so while being as prepared as possible.”

“Finding food supplies will be a bit of an issue,” Amanda claimed. “Unless we decide to pick the abandoned houses clean.”

“We don’t have to pick them clean to get a few days worth of rations,” Fabien argued. “Some cheese, a bit of smoked meat and a couple of vegetables should be enough to last us for a couple of days.”

“We need at least enough to get us through until we reach the next settlement.” Cruz stated.

“We can talk about this later,” Quentin said as he put down his cup and stood back up. “We should get going. There’s still a couple of streets we have to search through.”

“Already?” Letty asked surprised. “We barely got here.”

“The sooner we get things done the better.”

No one decided to argue further after hearing Quentin’s words. The outlanders picked up their weapons and followed the paladin outside, heading out towards the next street that needed to be cleared out. There was an eerie silence lingering around the group as they walked along the cobblestone streets, only stopping when they had to fight or to check out a building. Hours went by in such a monotone way with barely any banter between the group before the sun finally reached the highest point of the sky.

“I guess that’s that.” Fabien let out a tired breath as they got back from the last street to the entry point of Scholars’ Square.

“Not yet,” his sister shook her head. “We still have to look around the square itself.”

“Should we split up?” Osmond asked as he looked at the stoic paladin. “The area is supposed to be clear of the fallen, so we should be able move around safely.”

“That would indeed speed things up a bit,” Quentin agreed reluctantly. “I’ll take the right side with three of you, the rest will go to the left.”

“I’ll go with you handsome,” Valerie noted. “If you don’t mind. People tend to be less hostile towards infernals when they’re in the company of a paladin.”

“On that note,” Fabien scratched his chin. “I’ll stick with the others. One infernal might be overlooked, but two could be troublesome.”

“We’ll go with you.” Amanda said as she and Sophie stepped beside Valerie.

“Alright,” Regis looked at Quentin. “The rest of us will head to the left then. Take care of yourselves.”

“You too,” the paladin nodded. “Just yell if you find any trouble.”

“Likewise.” Osmond added before the warband split up and headed in two different directions.

“Your sister was a bit overeager just now.” Regis noted as he looked at Fabien while walking.

“What can I say,” the infernal rolled his eyes. “I think it’s pretty obvious that she has the hots for Quentin. I’m pretty sure she wanted the chance the cheer him up.”

“That would be a welcome change,” Cruz grumbled. “The dude went stoic way too fast.”

“There’s nothing surprising about that after this morning’s events.” Osmond stated as they reached the first building.

There was a slight gap in the door, making it clear that it wasn't locked in anyway. It let out a creaking noise as Regis pushed it with his bladestaff while the others readied their weapons in case of an attack. No living or undead could be seen inside, so the group walked in with slow steps. It was an ordinary looking home with a furniture set that made it obvious it belonged to a somewhat modest family.

“Search through every room,” Regis said. “But be careful. We don’t know if there are traps.”

Everyone nodded as each of them took it upon themselves to search through a different room, only to return a few minutes later, shaking their heads.

“It’s completely empty,” Cruz stated. “Even the food is gone from the pantry.”

“That means either someone looted this place before us, or the people that lived here packed up and left.”

“On to the next one?” Fabien asked, the rest of them agreeing.