"By the great gods," Xanthy breathed as she stared at the expanse of destruction lying before her. They had been on a hill overlooking some part of Yin Alora and Xanthy didn't fail to see scorched farmlands and cubical houses missing huge chunks off their walls.
It became more evident as Xanthy and June drove their paulsaris down the hill and into the outer city. Xanthy gritted her teeth as they rode in silence through roads of destruction accentuated by dust and something that looked like dried blood painting the soil underneath their paulsaris' hooves.
Some fires hadn't even stopped burning.
Soon, Xanthy craned her neck towards a huge wall that spanned a huge part of Yin Alora. When Xanthy looked left and right, it seemed like the wall went on forever. A mountain peak loomed on the horizon, forming some sort of a dark silhouette in the distance. Was that Xai- Ren? Maybe. If Xanthy squinted enough, she could swear that she saw ruins on the mountain's peak already hidden by a thin layer of clouds.
A temple in the sky? Also maybe.
"Xanthy," she heard June call her name from somewhere beyond her. Xanthy craned her neck to the direction of his voice and froze. Her paulsare seemed to have sensed it because it paused, too.
Xanthy's eyes dragged towards what's supposed to be the most fortified wall in all of Umazure and at the humongous chip on its crenelations. It was like someone decided to slam a hammer against it except that the hammer was probably the size of twenty graspelis.
Xanthy shook her head. Move. She kicked her paulsare's flank lightly to spur the animal to move forward. June led through through the gray expanse of the wall with Xanthy noting its rough surface and the abandoned crossbows dangling in odd angles in the undamaged crenelations. The sun stung Xanthy's eyes as it shone against the wall as if stopping her from looking further.
Rightly so as they came to a stop in front of a trench that an object formed as it skidded and slammed into the wall. The evidence of such an object was obvious from a hole in the wall the size of twenty paulsaris across and about the same number high. Xanthy's stomach swirled. Whatever made this wasn't anything they've ever seen.
If they were going to face something like this from Cardovia, they wouldn't even survive. Xanthy urged her paulsare to catch up to June's who had started to go inside the city through the hole. Even the animal seemed to sense what happened and began buckling against Xanthy's reins. Xanthy pursed her lips and uttered soothing sounds to calm the beast down.
"Just a little more," she promised more to herself than to the paulsare. Just a little more.
Like the destruction outside the city, inside the walls of Yin Alora weren't spared. Xanthy lost count of how many cubical houses have chipped or cracked walls or roads that have had red splattered on them.
The smell of upturned dirt was heavy on Xanthy's nose as well as of burning coal, glass, and wood. Ash twirled with the soft and gentle breezes whistling through the city. The silence could have slammed into Xanthy upside the head with its strength.
Apart from the torn awnings from some kind of shops and the discarded piles of straw swaying with the invisible wind from the mountains, everything was still. If Xanthy hadn't known there were people living here, she would've guessed that this was yet another ruin from a civilization that perished long ago.
Xanthy and June followed the trench the thing that slammed into the wall made. It uprooted cobblestones and houses alike but there was no sign of it anywhere. It just...disappeared. It could have been a stone or a spell but even when Xanthy asked June to track the magic usage in the area, he had come up with nothing.
The narrow roads from the wall later opened up to a vast square filled with colorful carts and even more colorful wares of food, textiles, weapons, and other ornaments. This must be where the traders and merchants come to sell their wares. Xanthy passed a wooden stall propped straight out of a merchant's caravan that displayed mirrors. The girl from the reflection couldn't have been paler.
Still, with some kind of awed fear, they moved forward. From the traders' square, Xanthy squinted and saw more taller buildings in the distance. Was that the Palace? If so, judging from the apparent chunk missing from its west side, it hadn't escaped without a scratch.
Xanthy craned her neck at the sky and in the absence of canopies obscuring it for once. How had it fared after witnessing such destruction?
The sound of reins scrambling made Xanthy turn to June. He had already swung his leg off his paulsare's flank and disembarked when Xanthy caught up to him. Her feet thumped against the fine layer of stone crumbs as she did the same. It didn't feel any better walking though it compared to when she was riding. If anything, she felt more powerless as she stood in the middle of buildings notches taller than her.
Xanthy followed June through the mess of fallen kegs, upturned tables, and forgotten versallis as he headed to the middle of the road where unmoving figures lay in odd figures. There was more than one time Xanthy dipped down and picked up a versal from the ground. Such a waste of good money. Why not?
Then, Xanthy paused in her tracks when she saw June stop by a specific figure and crouched. What was he doing? She ran over to ask him exactly that but her words died in her throat when her eyes rested on the figure with pale skin, lifeless eyes, and partially open jaw.
Blank, blue eyes stared up at the sky, unseeing. Red hair covered his head and most of his face, blending with his pink robes. A merchant, perhaps. Was he a pixie?
June must have sensed Xanthy's question and looked up to her. "We won't find pixie corpses here," he said, turning back to the corpse laid out in front of him. The trail had long ago extinguished as wine red blood formed a murky halo around the man's head and soaked into his robes. "They turn into embers when they pass on."
Xanthy remembered the ever-burning fires outside the city. Her gut couldn't have tightened harder. Her eyes widened further when June reached out and turned the man's head to the side. A gaping wound half the size of Xanthy's forearm serrated through skin from the ear to the base of the neck and almost exposed the bone. Something unpleasant threatened to crawl back out Xanthy's throat.
She took a deep breath. Her head was already light. No. She's alright. She's...
"Does this strike you as odd?" June turned to Xanthy with an expectant eyebrow raised.
She knitted her eyebrows, stepping back. What's June going on about? How would she know that something was off? June blinked at her and she blew a shaky breath. She could do this. She'd seen enough horrors from the Disfavoreds.
Xanthy crouched her weak knees and pinched her nose to avoid sniffing the corpse perfume wafting in the air. Dead bodies didn't smell good any time of the year. She squinted and forced herself to analyze the wound.
"It's too precise to be from a chunk of wall," Xanthy looked at the debris around them and nodded.
"Exactly," June nodded and gestured towards the man's legs that remained free of any rocks or other stray projectiles. "He wasn't crushed flat or smacked upside the head. He's been murdered."
Xanthy's stomach soured as a single suspect came to mind. "The Death Knight," she breathed.
June coughed into his sleeve and took a huge breath while leaning into his arm. Was he holding in his breath the entire time? Smart. "Yeah, him or someone else," June pointed to somewhere in the man's face. "Notice the slash by his throat?"
"What about it?" Xanthy blinked when she turned to June for an answer.
"It's too ragged," June pursed his lips and wiped his hand on his trousers. He shook his head. "The Death Knight didn't kill like that. Usually, his victims have a neat paper-thin line at their throats. Plus, his victims usually fall face-first and not the other way around."
Xanthy narrowed her eyes on him. "You know an awful lot about the Death Knight."
June raised his hands up just as quickly. "I was a fan of that conspiracy theory so I went around to snoop around."
"Are you some kind of a private investigator?" Xanthy crossed her arms.
"No," June crossed his arms before shrugging. "I just followed what the reports were saying."
He slapped his thigh as he stood up. He trudged to a corpse collapsed among piles of smashed fruits of various shapes and sizes. Dark-colored insects with claws and transparent wings were already flocking in the remains from both the squashed produce and the body.
June turned the merchant's face to one side to reveal yet another gash. Unlike the one from the previous body, this one sported a huge wound slashed straight through the throat. The man probably died gurgling in his own blood. Or something. The man's face was frozen mid-scream. One eyeball hung out of its socket.
Xanthy's stomach didn't stop turning.
"This isn't the Death Knight," June stepped away from the corpse and shook his head like he couldn't believe it. The corpse's head lolled back to its original place, plopping back against the smashed produce with a loud squelch. Xanthy's hand flew to her mouth as she ran towards the nearest upturned basket she could find. She heaved her stomach's contents as her mind swirled with images of pale corpses. Empty eyes flashed against her vision in quick succession. Gods...
Gentle hands gathered her hair off her face and neck. June crouched beside her as she hugged the basket with her arms limp. Sweat trickled from the side of her face and soaked her tunic. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and pushed the basket away.
"Ugh," she groaned as a frown crept into her lips. "That's nasty."
June handed her a vial with a clear liquid sloshing inside. "It's one of the fairy potions I have left," he offered her a thin smile. "It tastes good."
Xanthy returned his smile the best way she could. Let her hope it didn't resemble a pained grimace more. Xanthy uncapped the vial, tipped her head, and downed the whole thing with a single gulp. True to June's word, the liquid flushed down her throat with the bitter taste from the bile staining the insides of her cheeks. She handed the vial back to him. "Thanks."
June fetched a skin of water from his satchel and gave some to Xanthy before washing his own hands with it. "No problem," he shook his head as he put the skin back. "I was like that the first time too."
Xanthy raised her eyebrow. They were now walking back to their paulsaris whose reins were tied to the base of a statue without a head. "Why?" she cocked her head at him. "Why would you want to stare at a corpse?"
June shrugged. "I followed the Death Knight out of curiosity," he shrugged. "I had seen some in my time."
"That's messed-up," Xanthy twisted a lock of her hair with her fingers. June just chuckled.
"What are we going to do now?" June inclined his head at the sky. Xanthy narrowed her eyes then shook her head. They had just been through something heavy. It's fine if he changed the subject just this once.
Xanthy needed it anyway.
Xanthy's stomach didn't stop churning even as she swung her legs back into her paulsare. She met June's eyes the moment he straddled his. "On to the next city," Xanthy said against her mind's hesitation. "Come on."