"Oh heavens..."
Jun muttered to himself as he noticed that she had red hair that laid messily around the woman's face and chest.
Suddenly something moving next to the dead woman's body caught Jun's eye. He hesitantly looked further in the back of the wagon to see a man tied up and gagged laying on his side.
His terrified blue eyes locked onto Jun's as they shared their silent, mutual terror.
The man then began writhing about and muffling under his gag in what seemed to be a scared manner as he broke his gaze with Jun. Jun went to turn back around but then felt as a ice cold hand went across his shoulders and around his throat.
"I see that you found my food..." a smoky voice whispered into Jun's ear.
Lips brushed against his neck as they spoke, along with something that felt sharp.
Like fangs.
Jun started to breathe heavily as he realized that those fangs were mostly likely the same ones that punctured the dead woman's neck. He watched as Ałexándú's other hand reached towards her exposed organs and reached deep within her corpse.
He felt a bit of acid jump up to the back of his throat as he closed his eyes from the grotesque scene. But he still could hear the mixed sounds of the gagged man's muffled screams and the sliminess of organs being moved about.
His heart beat rapidly in his chest as the sound began to get closer to his ears. The sudden sound of flesh being ripped apart made Jun instinctively open his eyes. His eyes were greeted by the sight of Ałexándú's hand holding the ripped out liver of the woman.
The gagged man looked to have passed out as he laid still on the wagon's floor with his eyes closed.
"What in the everlasting shit ar—" the hand around Jun's throat went to cover his mouth to muffle his yelling.
He was then turned back around as he saw the moonlight shining on Ałexándú.
He held the woman's liver in his free hand as he looked at it longingly.
"There is a type of beauty in the macabre," Jun watched in horror as he licked the dripping blood off of the liver. The blood stained his pure white shirt with a deep red. "Is there not?"
Jun used both of his hands as he tied to pry the hand off his mouth but to no avail. It was like this man had some type of supernatural strength.
His eyes watched as the blood dripped from Ałexándú's mouth to his cravat. They widened as he noticed that there was no metal necklace hanging around his neck.
Ałexándú seemed to notice Jun's epiphany as a deranged smile graced his blood stained lips.
"It seems you have finally figured it out. I am fazrakiór. And you may be wondering how I became one. Do you not? I fell in love with Mrs. Szymásca's eldest daughter, Leyla." Jun watched as he broke eye contact with him and went back to staring at her liver.
"I yearned for her for years. Few days ago I finally mustered up courage to tell her how I felt. She defiantly rejected my confession. Afterwards I committed suicide. And now here we are. Lovely tale is it not?"
During this man's monologue, Jun tried to figure out how to get away from this demon-man creature.
He looked to his left and saw the lantern swaying on its pole as the black mare continued to trot on with not a single care in the world.
Jun swiftly grabbed the lantern off of the pole and smashed it in the creature's face. It caused the hand over Jun's mouth to be released as Ałexándú screamed in agony. The mare did a blood curdling, unnatural squeal as it went up on its hind legs.
Its rearing caused the wagon tipped backwards as the horse was frightened. Jun to fall off of the seat but managed to flip around enough to land on his side. He watched as the wagon caught fire.
As Jun staggered up to his feet, he saw the gagged man lying on the ground. He was about to go help him before he heard some sort of demonic sound.
Jun quickly whipped his head into the direction of the noise and saw that most of the flesh of the mare had fallen off of its snout, legs, and parts of its body.
It looked as if it was some type of undead creature as flames came out of its mouth as it roared at him.
He screamed from the depths of his soul as he fell backwards before running down the main road and towards Perenykisk.
Jun had never felt his legs carry him faster towards something in his entire life.
Adrenaline coursed through his body and to the tips of his hands and feet as he forgot about how tired he was.
He had absolutely no idea what he just encountered or what he had just witnessed but he wanted to get away from it as far as possible. And alive in the process.
As he ran with the sound of his heartbeat loud in his ears, he heard Misaki's voice.
"I would respect him more if he would've tried to kill Jiekai and try to save the people of Koami and the other villages."
Jun then seen the image of the gagged man lying on the ground flash before his eyes. He felt tears start to run down his face as he did his best to try and wipe them away.
The guilt of leaving an innocent, utterly helpless, person to die when he could've help struck Jun deep in his conscience.
Filling his already full mind.
He was just running away like he's always done. Just an outcast on the run.
Jun continued to think how he could've just used the metal ends of his bow to quickly cut the ties and gag off of the man. But no, he had to be scared of some demonic horse and save himself.
"I'm so sorry Misaki..." Jun muttered out to the heavens as he continued to run towards the walled city.
Eventually Jun ran out of breath as he stopped and desperately tried to catch his breath. A wave of nausea suddenly hit him as he managed to lean on a nearby wooden fence with his hand. He wiped the sweat from his brow as he looked up at the stars judging him from above.
A small, bright light quickly moved across the sky and disappeared as fast as it had appeared. Jun wanted to cry more but he had dried up all of his reserves. Just a tightened throat and guilt was all he felt.
As a shooting star in the East meant that someone had died.
Jun stayed by the wooden fence until he felt his heart stop beating in his ears and his nausea go away. He rubbed the side that he had fallen on and trudged down the main road of dirt towards his destination. The breeze soon turned into a light wind as he got closer to the city.
He saw the lights that lit up the wide bridge and the huge gates. Jun squinted his eyes and he managed to make out two guards standing in front of the gate. A rush of relief came over him as he picked up his pace.
Out of the blue Jun heard the noises of grunting that sounded like hungry pigs.
Jun then noticed various black, unmoving shapes laying on the ground a bit away from him. Smaller black shapes moved up and down on top of the larger ones, as if they were eating the larger shapes.
As he hesitantly continued forward towards the shapes he heard raspy, drawn-out hissing sounds. He immediately recognized these sounds to belong to vultures.
The vultures hissed at Jun when he got close enough to see what they were feeding on. He walked around them as the smell of fresh blood assaulted his nose once again.
The image of the woman's liver being held by Ałexándú came back to Jun as he tried to shake the scene from his thoughts.
The vultures looked to be feeding on dead wolves that laid in the middle of the street in a giant pool of blood. But what was strange was that they seemed to have one clean cut on each of their bodies.
Like they were all taken down with one swift swipe of a blade.
He doubted that the guards would walk all the way across the bridge to come kill these wolves and them walk all the way back to their posts.
While he was at the start of the bridge he looked back one last time at the dead wolves and noticed something unusual about their dead bodies.
They seemed to be a lot larger than any wolf he had ever seen.
Jun found it in himself to jog the way across the bridge and to the gates of Perenykisk. He hunched over and put his hands on his knees as he huffed in front of the guards.
A silence fell between Jun and the two guards as he slowly stood back up and almost lost his balance in the process. The guards stared at Jun with a mixture of concern and confusion, though more of the latter.
He saw that they wore typical Western chain mill armor under unusual scaly armor. A simple silver cape hung on their backs with a sword holstered on their side and a bow on their backs. They both wore typical knight helms that showed their faces along with a plume of feathers that came out of the top of it.
"Can..." Jun huffed as he looked up at the stars to try and caught his breath. "I...please...come in.." The guards looked between themselves then back at Jun.
"Where are you from?" the guard on the left asked. Jun looked at the guard with a slightly opened mouth.
"The land of respectful people. Where else?" Jun answered, completely fed up. The guard seemed taken aback by his answer.
"Are all of you Easterners that pale. Or...?" the other guard asked alarmed.
"Sorry but I've been through a lot to get here," Jun explained curtly as he did a deep breath. "What? You don't believe me?"
The guards looked even more confused as another silence fell between them.
"Oh no we understand." One of the other guards started as he raised his hand. "It is just that we do not expect adventurers to be wandering out here with zodiz out and about."
"First, and last guy to enter city, actually few minutes ago," the other chimed in, "we just watched as he killed whole pack of demonlupi effortlessly across bridge over there. You have probably already seen their bodies."
Jun turned around in bewilderment as he looked at the silhouettes of the corpses and vultures off in the distance.
"Well could you tell me about him?" Jun didn't see any guy in front of him as he was walking the main road to the gates here. The guard on the left rubbed the back of his helm.
"Um...how do I put this..?"
"Let us just say our original orders were to not let anybody in until dawn," The guard on the right began to say.
The other guard then finished, "And we let him in...whether we were...or were not...coerced to do so." Jun put a hand on his hip as he looked between the two guards.
"So are you two trying to tell me that now I can't be let in?" Jun tried to say in the nicest way possible but it still managed to sound like a threat.
But somehow that scared the guards.
"Oh no no no! We were not implying that at all!" the guard on the left said frantically as he waved his hands around.
"Just please do not do what last guy did!' the other pleaded as the two of them began to unlock the huge bolts on the gate.
While the two guards went about opening the gate Jun stood in astonishment at his sudden change in luck.
What in the world did the other guy do to these guys? Jun wondered worriedly as the gates made a loud creak as they opened.
Jun quickly bowed to the guards as he walked into Perenykisk with great delight. The houses of the city looked quite similar to those in Vosorod, but were a little more sophisticated and less weathered looking. The buildings were also a lot more taller and even had jettying on the upper stories.
As he walked forward through the grand and wide stone streets of Perenykisk he took in the foreign scenery.
Candles in tall, metal lantern posts lit up the streets beautifully along with lines of laundry being hung between buildings on either side of the street. Market stalls were on either side of the somewhat empty streets.
Not many people were out but it was a lot more livelier than Vosorod. He heard venders yelling out what they had for sale in Common.
From various herbs and raw meats to jewelry and clothing. He got some stares from the citizens there but they just seemed to mind their business for the most part. To Jun's delight.
The market reminded him of the crowded night markets back in the East. As night markets are extremely popular in the East and Jun absolutely loved going to them to pass the time, or after he had seen a client.
Though this market wasn't a night market per say, it still reminded Jun of them back in the East to an extent. There was always wonderful smelling food in the Eastern markets, day or night, back there which you could buy freshly cooked.
A stone bridge over a river was at the end of the market street. As he crossed the bridge he noticed how there were many potted plants that grew in either planter boxes underneath windowsills or hung on walls.
The bits of greenery of either exotic bushes or flowers made it bearable for Jun to see the amount of stone and houses in this city.
Now the next thing he wanted to do was go and find an inn to get some overdue sleep.
As he went through a few streets he heard some music in the distance. It reminded him of the music that played back in The Drunken Maiden, but with even more foreign sounds, which he guessed were instruments, being heard. They were played in a faster tempo as well.
Horses could be seen tied in front of the tavern. It seemed to have three stories with the bottom being made out of stone and the rest out of wood. The entrance didn't look like one that Jun had ever seen before. A small space was carved out on the bottom story from the street and the entrance was looking right at him instead of being directly off of the street.
The patrons within the tavern seemed to be having a party of sorts as they were all chanting and cheering at something going on in there as the music roared on along with them. Jun read the sign that hung above the small space of the entrance had a black, what seemed to be, a wolf.
Above the wolf read "The Black Wolf Tavern". Before he got any closer to the entrance he stopped before he tripped over an unconscious man laying on the ground.
Jun looked down at the man and noticed he was out cold. He guessed that he must've been kicked out of the tavern for being too drunk, as that was what places in the East do.
But upon closer inspection Jun noticed that this man was beaten up pretty badly. As his nose was very much broken along with a very bloody face. Jun had a sneaking suspicion that this wasn't a tavern party or celebration of sorts.
Before Jun could advance into the tavern another man flown out of the entrance near the unconscious one on the ground.
And to Jun's surprise he was also beaten up pretty badly and was out cold.