Sehnsucht

Chapter 1: Seven Year Debts

Warnings: Blood, death, injuries, monsters

Words: 2.8k

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—Seven Years Ago—

The rain puttered around her, and her lungs burned with a violent ache. She ran, blindly and confused, and lacking all direction. Her small legs could not take her very fast, not nearly as much as she would have wanted, for it was already night. The moonlight filtered through the heavy canopy of leaves above her, but it was not nearly enough with the cloudy skies. It was dark.

Her small feet, even calloused, hurt as she stumbled over thick roots and sharp stones, briars and thorns. It didn't hurt nearly as much as her back, though, so she hardly paid them any mind. The blood soaking through her torn nightgown was still warm, fresh from the gaping cuts splitting her back open. The burn in her left shoulder was violent and continued even to her bones.

Everything hurts, she thought, and even as she did, she tripped and fell, landing face first into the moist ground. She let out a sharp cry.

"It will be alright..." the voice from earlier said in her thoughts, deep and gravely like stone.

"No one is here," she sobbed, clutching her dagger in her hands as a wolf's howl pierced the air. She shivered in fright. Crawling, she curled up against a tree, her body sinking into it as she begged it to open up and swallow her whole. The bark dug into the long gashes along her spine, and poked into the burn on her shoulder.

Valeska had said to go east, that someone might be here and would take her in when she had strapped the dagger to her waist. Soft, dreadful whispers. The leather band was too large for her, and the blade seemed as though it was half her size. She had the decency to wipe her tears, but not enough to try and stop the barrage of rotten food being tossed at her. Still, she was grateful then...but it seemed for naught.

"No...they aren't," the voice said regretfully. "But you will be alright."

"The wolves—"

"They will not hurt you," he assured. "You should rest, little keeper. I know it hurts..." he said, and his voice seemed mournful. "But in time, it will pass. I will guard you tonight, so rest..."

Despite his reassurances, the little girl was unable to sleep much that night. It wasn't her first night alone, not the first time she had curled against the pain, back drenched in her own blood. Yet, with the mark burned into her back, the smell of rotten food caked in her hair from the people she had once longed for the approval of, the press of her father's hand shoving her toward her demise...her mother's silence...everything was different. On this painful and agonizing night, everything changed.

—Currently—

It was the sound of a groan that drew her to him. Her footsteps were light on the forest floor as she followed the sound over a hill, hardly making a sound louder than the rustling of leaves in the wind. Even the snow beneath her frozen feet would not give any announcement of her presence. Hesitant and careful, she approached the peak of a short, sharp drop above a cave. A ghoul's cave, more accurately. When a light breeze stirred, she retched silently. Snatching the tattered, red scarf from her neck, she wrapped it around her face to guard her senses from the scent of rotting flesh mixed up by the air. She drew closer to the pained groans, carefully descending the rocky face of the mountain. She cursed herself for even trying to look.

It was more likely a Ghoul than anything else.

Unfortunately, as she peeked around the edge of the high ground she knelt on, she realized it was both. The bodies of several ghouls either laid with their heads detached from their bodies, their throats slit, or their chests looking strangely caved in. A camp of dead men—villagers from the base of the mountain, she realized—sat decomposing and partly consumed about the region. An arm here, a leg there. That would account for the smell.