Argh! I groaned. My eyes felt heavy. But somehow my body, light.

Everything around me swayed. Or was I the one who was doing the swaying?

I forced my eyes open. I hadn’t noticed till now but someone was carrying me, panting. “Kayle?” Hoarse. Was that really my voice?

I didn’t recognize him at first but it did seem like him.

“You’re up. Can you run?” He let me down from his back.

Blood across his face, cuts and bruises-

I didn’t like being carried like a thing but I didn’t have any complaints. I looked at my body. All the limbs were attached and nothing was out of the ordinary. So, I nodded and we both ran. If you can call swaying and not falling down running, then yes, we were running.

But why were we running?

“What happened to them?” I asked still in a daze. I couldn’t really accept the reality but I had to face it at some point. There was no way I could just forget about it anyway.

“They’re dead.” Kayle didn’t look at me, he didn’t rebuke me like usual either. He just ran. And I ran with him. “They’re dead.”

There were no words between us, just pure silence.

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there just wasn’t anything to say.

Nothing.

Awoo!!

The forest in the night was a scary place but strangely it didn’t make me feel afraid. There was just one emotion in my mind, in my heart; grief.

And perhaps…

Regret.

“What about their-”

Kayle didn’t look back. He just kept running. He ran faster than me and he avoided the questions. I couldn’t blame him. He was the leader and he knew what he was doing. I already knew that something very bad happened, but I couldn’t bring myself to come to terms with it. I just couldn’t.

“Kayle!” And yet- yet my words… just-

Damn it!

He stopped. He just stopped outright- “They’re evil. They’ll destroy us. And there’s more than one-” He didn’t look at me.

But I could tell-

Horror.

There was horror in his voice.

“There’s more?”

He started running again.

And so, did I.

Not looking back.

Not again.

But really-

Those things-

There was more?

***

How long had we been running?

I didn’t know.

Were we being followed?

I had no way of knowing.

What about the village?

Was everything okay there?

Questions.

Yet.

No answers.

Lots and lots of questions.

But no answers.

We stopped.

No-

Kayly stopped and I crashed onto his behind-

“Warmth?”

Kayle sniffed the air. “Is it me or is it…” He paused, staring up. “Bright? And smokey-”

I stood next to him, staring at the forest- just Infront of the village.

Yeah, though roughly 4 in the morning, it was bright.

The orange kind of bright.

And the smoke?

“You don’t think-” My words didn’t want to leave my mouth.

But-

We ran harder-

And reached the village.

Or what was supposed to be our village.

“ARGHhH!!!”

But it was only filled with screams-

The things with red and yellow eyes-

And-

Lots-

Lots of fire….

“Holy fucking god….”