Ilaria and her companions spent 2 months inside the dungeon clearing and attempting to level as much as possible. For originally having a sheltered life, this was the first major dungeon dive that had been allowed to her. She was so excited to see her family and city again. Most of all, surprisingly, she was excited to see Ray. They hadn’t spent a lot of time together, barely a few days but she just felt a connection with him.

“So, now that vacations over, what do you think your dad’s going to make you do next?” Arj asked, giving her a sympathetic smile.

“Not sure. I assume I’ll have to give a full report of events here, just so father doesn’t lock me up in a tower for the rest of eternity” she replied.

“Ain’t that right” Rayleigh laughed.

The group continued their light banter throughout the dungeon as they reached the exit. Alif had brought up the rear. She was carrying a dishevelled and unconscious woman with flaming red hair. The party had found her in the boss room of the dungeon. She hadn’t woken up and not a single one of them had successfully cast identify on her. As she was breathing normally and simply wouldn’t wake, the group decided they would take her back to the healers in town, maybe they would know what was wrong with her.

On the roads back to the village, the group immediately knew something was wrong. There were dead bodies littering the roads, mostly dark elves but other races were thrown in the midst as well. Some of the bodies Ilaria recognised as trades people within the village. Why were they out here?

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Silently, the group moved into what Ilaria referred to as stealth mode. They climbed the trees and activated all skills that helped with stealth. Ilaria herself being the most dextrous, also had extremely good perception skills. She was able to see far ahead and looked on in horror. All throughout the path and trees there were dead dark elves, hundreds of them.

Ilaria immediately lost control. With red in her eyes, she charged back towards the village, stealth out the window. Rayleigh and the others silently chased her. They couldn’t afford to let her out of their sight but didn’t want to give away their position to any potential enemies. They would make better counter attackers then blindly charging in with Ilaria.

They reached the Finrial village biome in record time. As soon as they crossed into the biome. Ilaria let out a cry of despair. She fell to the ground on her hands and knees. The village was a smouldering ruin. The air was filled with the smell of rot and decay and even worse, the group could see corpses. An entire pile of corpses rose out of the centre of the village, at least 15 metres high. The fate of the elders was clear to see. At the top of the pile were the decapitated bodies of each elder, spikes through their torsos.

Worst yet, Ilaria’s father was at the top of the corpse tower. He was clearly dead as well. His body had been pinned down by spikes and a bone crown had been placed on his head. Sitting in his lap was clearly Ilaria’s baby brother, only 3 months old, decapitated as well.

With tears streaming down her face Ilaria let out a cry. She drew a dagger and thrust towards her stomach. Before it could break skin, Rayleigh deflected the dagger with his sword. “It’s not your time to die princess. Live and take vengeance, for our entire race. You are our leader now.”

They slowly walked through town to check for survivors. There were none. Whoever had done this, had done so a few weeks ago. Crows were already picking apart the bodies and there were signs of decay everywhere.

“Let's go, I need to get out of here” Ilaria said, tears still streaming down her face.

“I promise we’ll get the fuckers that did this” Alif said.

“Where do we even go?” Rayleigh responded.

“I don’t know but I know we need to leave. We can’t be safe here”. Ilaria said.

The group left through the western gate. They noticed a small sign carved into a tree in the Dark Elf language.

Dragonkin are heading west to new lands, nothing could be done here. Any survivors or people seeking refuge, seek us out.