A restless night of turbulent thoughts were all that graced Akazawa Saki. Sleepless in every meaning of the word, punctured by paranoia and anxiety and driven by the what-ifs that rumors this time weren't just an exaggeration of entertainment.
Dawn came slowly, measured in the sparks that flew from the dying camp fire embers and heavy chorus of cricket tones. There were no irritations of human form to torment her once the early hours of the morning drew in, all four forms that she were to tend to were absent, seemingly retired for the night, and the horses slumbered all the same.
However, Saki didn't get a single moment of sleep.
There was something in the air that had changed following the discussion that the guards had with Shirayuki and Obi, enough so for Saki to note its presence with little more than a scowl and gritted teeth. And it only sought to worsen when the inquisitive pair emerged from their so called hiding places.
That shift in the air was so potent the instant that Shirayuki had spotted her trimming and wrapping the dried meat in wax-treated parchment however, that Saki could identify exactly what it was.
It was pity. Or at the very least, it's what Saki took as pity.
And that did not fail to displease the woman greatly.
Exchanges had been had while Saki was absent, information gleaned about her that made some impact to the petite woman now at Saki's side asking if she needed any help preparing breakfast, looking hopeful, as if there was nothing more she really wanted to do right now.
However, Saki simply shook her head in reply and tossed a fairly large strip of dried meat to the onyx feline, who almost seemed to purr as it leaned up to catch the incoming snack.
'Then, can I at least help wash up?' Shirayuki asked.
Saki rolled her eyes from behind her mask and lifted the lid off of the cooking pot to retrieve the contents from within. Without care, Saki plucked the large mound of bread she had tossed inside and dropped it carelessly onto the barrel she had been using as a makeshift table.
Surely this woman had more important things to do?
Like maybe something like going over what she needed before they set out for the diseased, dying forests?
'Miss Akazawa--'
'No.' Saki cut in over the woman as she dropped a serrated knife and a rough canister of market-grade butter next to the bread and stalked off.
Thankfully for Saki's remaining sanity, the redhead decided not to insist on helping anymore, at least for that morning.
Eventually, after breakfast the small redhead decided that it really was best to get herself organized for her first visit to the dying forests, organizing the cart for all necessities, and thankfully her inquisitive bodyguard decided to keep her company well away from Saki.
The sun had begun to rise in the skies at this point, early enough that they had at least six hours of daylight the Court Herbalist could use in the field before they would have to return.
The crackles and sounds of the forest was absent, and all that was left was the wind howling through the treetops. And it was cold, more so than it had been yesterday.
Saki was certain they would be seeing snow before dark.
It was decided that one of the guards would stay back to keep watch over the camp, one with the horse-drawn cart to look after it at the edge of the dying forests while Saki lead Shirayuki and Obi along wherever it was the redhead wanted to go. It was perhaps a haphazard way of doing things, but agreed upon when the prospect of wandering bandits or wayward predators came up.
At the very least, so long as nothing happens, the two guards had rather comfortable standings, really. They didn't have to do anything unless something actually happened, and they both could get out of the weather whenever they wanted.
The journey was silent beyond the clatter of cart wheels and soft whinnies of the two horses as Saki lead them through the forests. Her escortees sat within the cart watching the landscape pass them by, or perhaps discussing further steps into the day's events. It mattered not.
Saki lead the horses through the wilderness until finally, she reached a patch of pine forest she had scouted and decided upon as their first destination.
The disease should take longer to reach the horses and cart if they were left here.
'Are we already there, Miss Akazawa?' Came Shirayuki's voice, bright and curious as she poked her head out of the closest window of the cart, earning little more than a fleeting glance from Saki as she tied the horses reins to a thin tree. 'Why have we stopped here?'
Taking the woman's silence as all the answer she was going to receive on the matter, Shirayuki eventually emerged from within her cart clutching an assortment of items, both cumbersome and, in Saki's own opinion, useless for the time being.
'Only bring what you can afford to throw away at a moment's notice.' Saki instructed as she pulled her scarf tighter around her neck, and the bottom portion of her masked face. 'If something happens, you won't be able to retrieve it.'
And Saki wasn't going to make any special trips to collect missing belongings.
Even her own.
'Oh, yes of course.' Shirayuki agreed as she promptly disappeared back inside to do as instructed.
'And some rags to cover your shoes and face, unless you're fine with throwing them away!' Saki added, though she doubted the court herbalist had heard her.
The sly bodyguard of the petite redhead had emerged shortly after the woman's return inside the cart, watching as Saki lifted an arm-full of the iron pickets she had strapped to the side of the cart and proceeded to drive one through the soft soil a few meters away. Thankfully there was nothing said, he didn't bother to annoy her with words, though his gaze was as prominent upon her back as the sneers from the gruffly spoken guard currently reclining back inside the cart.
Soon Shirayuki had caught up with Saki, with Obi trailing along after them lazily as she lead the way through the forests, staking iron pickets into the ground every twenty meters.
'I'm sorry, Miss Akazawa, but what are you doing?' Shirayuki couldn't help but ask.
Again, Saki refused to answer, which drew an obvious sigh from the redhead as the seconds ticked by.
The sickly stench of death reached Saki's nose as they neared the edge of the dying forests, and for a second, she thought she heard the faint, far off sound of voices on the air. Not necessarily human, but the sounds of something that wasn't the wind piercing through the treetops. Shirayuki a great few meters behind Saki had coughed as the taint cut through her air passages, and promptly, the woman had lifted the neck of her Herbalist garbs to try and cover her face.
Indeed, the redhead hadn't heard her.
With one final iron picket driven into the ground, Saki was done with marking the distance between the cart and the line of decay. And barely a second later, a horrified gasp sounded as the masked woman pulled aside a sweeping branch of underbrush to reveal the decimation ahead.
It was an uncomfortably familiar sight for Saki to see the trees completely wilted away to bare wood, branches sagging and discoloured and the grasses beneath a sickly brown sogging to mush. The unhealthy, unnatural taint of the residue could be seen even without having to look properly, The sound of buzzing insects on the air was unpleasant, yet expected for Saki, a hail of flies that hovered in the air, swarming the nearby, visible bodies of animals that collapsed and passed away before they could reach the uncontaminated wilderness.
'What on earth...?' Shirayuki openly gaped at the decaying lands before them, blinking wide-eyed as Saki continued onward. 'This really is serious!'
'This is mild.' Saki countered as she tossed a handful of large cotton cloths back towards the stunned herbalist. 'Use them. You don't want to breathe this in.'
There was nothing worse than knowing she was right, and it was all she could do to try and shrug it off with the intention of leaving the investigation to Shirayuki, and continuing on, searching for any sign of anything still alive.
Saki hung around in the distance, keeping an eye on Shirayuki as she got to work, scooping up samples into phials, examining the decaying flora closely, even checking over the soil condition among other things. She watched as Shirayuki quickly journeyed back to the cart, returning soon after with more sample phials to continue her sample endeavors.
She had told them that she would return in five hours, though she couldn't be sure if she were heard over the howling winds.
But remain, she did not.
She journeyed along the outer edge of the dying forests, eyes scanning the surroundings for anything alive, for something she hoped to save. Up in tree branches and down in thickets of dying grasses she scoured, finding naught but untouched corpses that only the haze of flies would devour.
Even having expected as such, Saki couldn't help but feel more disheartened with every cold, motionless body she found.
The chill in the air began to seep into Saki's flesh near the four hour mark since she had left Obi and Shirayuki back at the edge of the dying forests, thirty minutes since she had given up on trying to find any living survivor within these death lands. Flakes of crystalised water swept through the air, painting bleak grey dots against an already lifeless place.
And it only sought to worsen as she made her way back towards the others.
The return to camp was silent on Saki's behalf, spent in the throws of thought and responsibilities requested of her by the Second Prince. She filtered out everything as she worked, scarcely noting how Shirayuki spent most of her time holed away inside the cart with the samples she had gathered, hardly even noting the assassin-like Obi perched atop the cart with his sharp gaze falling upon her every now and then.
The second day was, much the same, spent in silence as she tended to the needs of the others, and the third was just the same.
Little headway was made in Shirayuki's research, though at this point Saki had almost given up on any progress at this point. The morning was painted a clear white blanket among the forest grounds, chilling the Clarines wilderness, a sight that Saki was already sick of seeing.
Another sleepless night keeping watch from the treetops was taking its toll on her, and Saki knew it. She could feel that her body wanted to rest, but she wouldn't be caught dead taking the sleeping draughts Garak had made for her around prying eyes.
She could feel the weight in her limbs, the edge of exhaustion that continued to creep closer as she lead the way through the forests to another stretch of dying lands. Be it from stubborn pride or paranoia, it meant nothing beyond the fact that she wouldn't let her guard down around these people.
Saki however, knew she had to leave in the opposite direction this time, venture through the living forests to hunt some game. Grains and long-life produce aside, Saki knew the four under her so called "care" would fare better in this weather with some meat in their meals.
The dried meat she prepared would only go so far, after all.
Saki didn't grant any parting words as she disappeared into the wilderness, trudging through ankle-deep snow as she ventured for clean, uncontaminated land where she could hunt, where she could do what she needed without having to focus on the fact that she was being watched like a hawk.
The sounds that graced her ears were stifled by the crunching of fresh snow underfoot, caressed by the low rumble of wind against her exposed ears. It felt horribly like her senses were dulled down, though she knew a lack of sleep was to blame for that.
She couldn't place exactly how far she had walked, though she knew without a shadow of doubt that she had walked in a straight line. Following the sun as she learned, Saki's footsteps carved a trail she could follow back, providing it didn't begin to snow before she had to.
Eventually, Saki's ears caught the faint grunts of what sounded like a deer in the distance, upwind, if her exhausted senses caught that right. She nocked an arrow in her bow as she crouched, prowling cautiously as she closed in on a distant speck of brown against the grey and white lands ahead of her.
Even as Saki reached close enough to see exactly what was wandering through the trees, close enough to raise her bow and aim at a range she should be able to hit without fail, she hesitated. Her vision was unsteady, her concentration falling as she trailed along after the contentedly wandering stag. All she could do was sigh to herself as she moved to close the distance a little more.
'I really must be exhausted...' She whispered to herself, earning a waking purr from her onyx companion laying within the hood of her cloak like it were its own personal hammock. 'I can't even remember how many days its been since I last slept...'
It was common for her to neglect sleep for a couple days, on occasion, three.
Minutes passed until Saki had reached a stable point through the forests, closing in enough where she could get her eyes to focus for more than a handful of seconds. She cursed having to focus so hard, though before long, she found the opportunity to let her arrow fly.
The stag had slowed to a halt nearby a massive spruce tree that towered over the others, ears trained on something that Saki couldn't hear, head turned in completely the opposite direction. And as the arrow flew and clipped the creature in the side of the head, Saki could only let out a thoroughly relieved breath as it tumbled to the ground without a sound.
Though it was short-lived the moment she heard what it was the deer had noticed; distant, far off howls of wolves.
Quickly, albeit a little haphazardly, Saki closed the distance to the slain stag, pausing briefly to check its throat and eyes for any sign of decaying flesh just like in others she had seen to have eaten from the diseased forests before she secured a rope firmly around the waist of the deer and proceeded to carefully scale the spruce tree closest.
Before the wolves would come upon her and the immobile meal, she had to bleed it, clean the meat and skin it. Most of which she could do up in the tree branches out of reach, and if they happened to find her, she could at least hurl the pieces she wasn't taking out of the tree and distract them with it. Hopefully, if they were wolves a little on the ravenous side, they'd focus all their attention on a side of meat over an unreachable up in the trees.
And so, she prepared to do just that.
The rope she had secured around the slain stag was hoisted over a branch twelve or so meters off the ground, tugged back around a branch to act as a makeshift pulley, while she stood on a far broader, intact branch just a few meters beneath it.
It took minutes for Saki to hoist the kill up into the branches with her, a further minute more for her to tie the rope off and cut the arteries so the body could drain, and all the while the exhaustion plagued her, causing her to have to shake herself out of countless pauses before she lost hours to her exhaustion.
However, the sound of horses on the air soon drew Saki's weary attention from the draining kill to scan over her surroundings.
Through her weary gaze, Saki noted that she had slain the stag close to a major road barely a few dozen meters from the base of the spruce tree, that of which appeared the most direct route towards Wistal, if Saki was any suitable judge at that moment. And as the minutes ticked by, she found herself noticing forms through the various branches between her and the road. Many forms, from horse-back to walking on foot, sounding a regular march through the forests. Saki had no ability to identify this group of what she estimated to be a hundred men, at least until they passed by the part of the road closest to Saki's current tree.
The unhindered, clearer sight of them had the breath hitch painfully in the back of Saki's throat.
Tunics of mold gray trimmed with black were worn over chain mail armor, combined with fur coats held together with strings of gold thread. A terrifyingly familiar sight that rang through her mind with chilling clarity. The cross emblazoned with black stones and flowering purple milkweed decorations dangled from every neck, spears and swords were holstered, clattering against the snowy winter evening.
She stumbled backwards as she found herself recognizing those crests, the decorative markings of the faithful, and to her horror, faces leaning towards familiar roused through her thoughts.
Saki didn't need any information from the Second Prince about the foreign soldiers. She didn't need to hear further information when the sight before her was all the answer she needed. A living, breathing embodiment of hate and prejudice she knew so very well, so horrifically familiar that it was like her worst fears had decided to grace her in the flesh.
Asclepia was here in Clarines marching towards Wistal en masse like an execution parade.
And as Saki took another shaking step backwards, her foot landed upon naught but thin air.
A terrified gasp tore its way violently through her throat as Saki found herself tumbling backwards off the tree branch, hitching painfully as she felt startled claws dig firmly into her shoulder. Frantically, she drew one of her daggers and attempted to stab it into the trunk of the tree to slow her descent, if not halt it entirely.
And yet, her attempts fell fruitless.
The force of her fall dislocated her arm with a blood curdling pop, her gloved fingers slipped from the dagger promptly after, and the ground came hurdling towards her faster than she could counter. It was all Saki could do to try and turn mid-fall, to try and maneuver herself so she wouldn't land on her back, but in the end, it was pointless. For the ropes she still held bundled in her fingers, that she had used to drag the slain elk into the massive spruce tree snagged around her limbs, entangling her like a python to its prey and snapped taut, constricting lethally around her only able arm, and her neck. The force had her teeth bite jarringly into her tongue, flooding her mouth with blood quickly.
She gasped, choking within the binds her body hung from painfully, body writhing as her oxygen was cut off. The ropes tightened around her arm, cutting off more circulation with every passing second.
The toes of her boots dangled mere inches from the ground, grazing chilled grasses that still poked through the layer of snow that had fallen over the past few days.
Was this is?
Was she actually going to die, not from old age or her wrecked body but an accident she simply tumbled into, instead?
Saki grit her teeth as she forced herself to still her struggles, to halt the worsening close of those ropes around her neck. She couldn't panic, not right now. If she panicked any longer, she really was going to die.
A faint, distraught growling echoed from somewhere around Saki's feet, feline in nature though Saki couldn't pick anything more in her current predicament.
She was growing light headed, her entangled arm numbing quite significantly as she managed to swallow the scream that threatened to peel free from her lips amid the agonizing pain tearing through her body.
However, the hefty crunching of undisturbed snow pierced through the barrage of pain flooding her senses and alerted her to the fact that she wasn't alone.
Her eyes shot open as she recognized the sounds to be the heavy footfalls of feet crushing the crystallized shards of water, of thick boots and the jingling of steel links making up chain mail dangling, slightly dulled in the wind-swept air. And as she heard the cat pacing beneath her let out a terrified hiss, Saki knew she was in more trouble than possible.
Black spots began to appear in her vision as she stilled her breath, holding what little she could as the blood escaped her lips and began to pour instead down her face.
She couldn't breathe, couldn't afford to show that she was still alive even as her body screamed for desperate relief. She had to play dead. Otherwise, she was going to die.
Through the worsening spots flooding her vision, Saki could see a shadow that was vaguely human, clad in many layers to protect against the wind. A large, heavily gloved hand lifted into her line of sight, reaching towards her mask to pull it free from her face. Words were shouted across the air, words she couldn't depict from the building up of blood in her head. Especially as those binds around her neck seemed to suddenly tighten, as if someone was tugging on them to cut into her flesh quicker.
She could neither see nor hear what was happening around her, pain flooded her every limb, every inch of her form that hung helpless.
As the black spots overcame her vision entirely and her eyes rolled back into her skull, her consciousness faded.
And all that graced her last seconds of consciousness was the telltale sound of a drawing sword, and the shrill slicing of the air at her neck.
--=[Submitted May 7th 2019, with 3737 words in total]=--