As it turned out Bjorn was right. Throughout the night the small wounds began to slowly close up and the pains and aches that ran throughout his whole body began to disappear. Though the wound in his calf from where the arrow punctured through wasn’t fully healed. Even so when they packed up in the morning to head on, his limp was basically gone. Throughout the day while they walked the limp slowly got better as the pain in his leg began to disappear.

  They traveled on following what they thought were the tracks of Killian and his cronies. The trail they followed ran south east for a while and then it leveled out and headed more east. They followed the trail for another few days, not saying much as they went.

  It was nearing the evening on the 3rd day when they crested a hill and before them lay a village. At first Adriana wanted to rush down there, she was looking forward to the thought of a warm place to sleep tonight, a bed, and not the ground. Bjorn stopped her

  “Why? Why don’t we go down there?”

  Bjorn wasn’t entirely sure why but something within him screamed that something was off. Instead of answering right away he put his finger to his lips and then pointed down. She withdrew her gaze from Bjorn and focused on the village laying before them. They stood like that for a few minutes.

  Then all of a sudden it clicked with Bjorn. “Look at it. It is almost dark, why are there no lights up? Why is everything dark?”

  Bjorn could see her eyes widen with comprehension at what Bjorn was talking about. “There should be some kind of light.”

  “Yes. In a village like this families would have a fire going so they could cook dinner. After dinner they would have the tail end of their fire to help warm the house through the night. That should cast even a little bit of light. It is too still and too quiet.”

  Adriana was silent for a few moments drinking in everything Bjorn was pointing out. “What do we do?”

  “We retreat, go back a ways and set up our own camp. Though I would be fine, not you. Both of the suns have gone down which means that light will continue to disappear. Soon night will fall and you don’t have the ability to see at night.”

  “Alright. I saw a place we can camp tonight about half a mile back. Let's go to that.” She turned to leave and turned her back on the dark village.

  Bjorn stood there for a moment before he nodded and slowly backed away from the village keeping his eyes towards the town as he went. He didn’t know exactly why, but something about the place made the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up. Over the years he had learned to trust his gut, and the one time in recent history that he hadn’t listened to it Meira and Alaric died.

  They traveled quite the distance before Bjorn relented and turned his back towards the village. It wasn’t until the hairs on the back of his neck lay down once again. They made their way back to the little cove that Adriana spotted as they walked through the forest. It was just a small bluff in the forest floor. Enough to cut out the last bit of wind that made it through the trees.

  Without communicating it they set into their normal watch routine with Bjorn taking the first watch letting Adriana sleep. They went without a fire that night, there was just something wrong with that village that Bjorn couldn’t put his finger on. All night long Adriana tossed and turned in fitful sleep as Bjorn kept watch.

  He was on edge. Every little sound brought his full attention to that area. He would sit there focused on where the sound came from until another new sound drew his attention. It was long, and stressful. Eventually Adriana woke up on her own accord and stood, making her way over to the top of the bluff that Bjorn had told her he would be on.

  She came over and sat next to Bjorn. “You might as well go to sleep, I can’t sleep anymore.” She whispered into his ear.

  “You have another 3 hours to sleep tonight.”

  She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. I got a creepy feeling from the village, because of that I had nightmares.”

  Bjorn nodded his head. “Same. We should be careful tomorrow when we explore.”

  “Can’t we just go around?”

  “No, if we do that we could miss something vital. We have to investigate tomorrow.”

  Bjorn saw her chewing on her lower lip. She looked like she wanted to say something more but in the end she didn’t. “Go to bed.”

  Bjorn nodded and stood from his position. He dropped the 7 feet from the top of the bluff into the little alcove at the bottom of the cliff. He pulled out a blanket from his bag of holding and wrapped himself in it. Soon he fell asleep.

  Like Adriana he was plagued with nightmares while he slept. He kept seeing Meira’s crying face as the life slowly drained away from her body. He saw Alaric struggling against a much larger opponent as he was drug towards the side of their storage shed. He saw Medera distract the mauler as it came in close to strike. He watched the mauler's spear-like legs skewer her body over and over again as it ran after Bjorn. Each time he tried to run and each time he failed to get away. He would get caught and he saw the mouth of the mauler come down and bite his head off. Then it would all start again.

  It was with a start that he jolted awake. Immediately his body entered fight or flight. He looked around breathing heavily, but the nightmares that plagued his dreams hadn’t followed him into the waking world. He slowly lowered the dagger that he had unknowingly drawn to defend himself when he made the transition from sleep to conscious.

  Slowly the memories of his dreams began to fade into his subconscious and his heart rate began to slow. His muscles slowly relaxed as his breathing slowed. Bjorn eventually slid the dagger back into its sheath once he was certain that there was no danger to him or Adriana.

  It was still dark and it had only been two hours but there was no way he was getting any more sleep tonight. He got up and stretched his sore muscles then wrapped up his blanket and put it away. When he looked up to where Adriana was on watch he saw her asleep.

  His first gut reaction was anger. Anger that she couldn’t stay away through the night and put both of them at risk. Afterall they had been vulnerable, if something came up on them it would have cost them crucial seconds to respond. As Bjorn thought about it though his mind began to relax and his anger began to drain.

  He kept forgetting that Adriana was still a young girl. She was nearly 20, she is now almost the same age Bjorn was when he came to the Eld. He wasn’t prepared for the life that he has had to live so far, it wasn’t fair for him to expect more out of Adriana. Instead of waking her and yelling he climbed up the bluff and sat down next to her. His presence was enough to jolt her awake.

  Her breathing was the same as what Bjorn’s had been when he woke up. The fear quickly replaced by acceptance that she had made a mistake. Guilt flooded her body. “I am sorry Bjorn. You were right, I should have stayed asleep.”

  He shushed her. “It’s alright, go back to sleep. I have watch for the rest of the night.”

  “Are you sure? I told you I would take watch, I can do it.”

  Bjorn gave her a stare that was a mix of withering and reproachful. “You have nothing to prove to me. I know who you are and what you are capable of. You are still tired, go to sleep, I will keep us safe tonight.”

  Adriana nodded and leaned back into the stump of a dead tree that Bjorn had been using as his post for watch that night. She closed her eyes and her breathing began to even out again. She stayed like that for a few minutes and then shifted. A few minutes later she shifted again.

  Finally she opened her eyes again and looked at Bjorn. “Can I lay on you? I can’t seem to get comfy and I still have that weird feeling.”

  Bjorn sat there for a few minutes not replying. His eyes were still scanning the surrounding forest, they never landed on her. Throughout the entire time she stared at Bjorn trying to read his body language. Eventually he gave the barest of nods and she scooted over. She made to lean into his body but he stopped her.

  He got up and walked to the spot she just vacated. He figured if she was going to get comfy, he might as well as well. He sat down with his legs stretched out before him. She lay down, laying her head on his lap on his lower thighs. She made to wrap her arms around his lower leg but he stopped her.

  “If something comes, I will need to get up quickly. When you woke up you tensed up. If you tense up it could hinder me and slow me down.”

  He couldn’t see Adriana’s expression as her back was to him but she nodded and drew her hands back into her sides crossing them in front of her chest. Slowly her breathing began to slow and even out. A shiver ran through her body so Bjorn pulled out the same blanket he used earlier and lay it over her.

  The rest of the night was uneventful. An hour before dawn the feeling of unease he had been feeling finally faded away. Which just made him more on guard. He wasn't sure what it was but something had changed even if he couldn't tell. When the suns were just starting to peak over the horizon Bjorn decided it was time to wake Adriana up. She had moved from restless sleep to sleeping soundly, Bjorn's presence putting her at ease letting her finally get a good night's sleep.

  “Morning.” As she sat up and stretched.

  “We have waited long enough, it's time to go.” he said with little preamble, standing and grabbing the blanket from where it sat on the ground. She grumbled for a moment before she thought better and followed Bjorn’s lead.

  They traveled through the woods retracing the steps they took last night. Soon enough they were at the base of the hill that gave them a vantage down on the village. Bjorn put his finger to his lips and dropped into stealth and began to make his way up the hill.

  When Adriana saw Bjorn’s body take on an almost transparent look she too dropped into stealth to follow. But soon she lost him in the tall grass. She tried her best to keep up but she wasn't as skilled and didn't know exactly how and where to place her feet so she didn't make a sound giving away her position.

  Although she wasn't able to keep track of Bjorn he could keep track of her. Whether that was because of his more experience, his higher wisdom attribute, or because of her low skill level in stealth, it didn't matter. What did matter was that even from his position further ahead he could make sure that she didn't blunder into any danger.

  When he crested the hill he got a good view down on the village. Just as it had been last night there was nothing really that indicated that there was life. There was no hustle and bustle about, no early morning fires to stave off the post dawn chill, not even so much as an animal wondering about. One thing that was for sure though was that the sense of danger and unease he had felt the night before was still absent.

  Less than a minute later Adriana also crested the hill and had a full view of the village. She stopped and looked down at it, unbeknownst to her she had stopped nearly 5 feet away from where Bjorn had stopped. Her attention wasn't on him directly otherwise she would have seen through the stealth. Still she let out a small stifled scream when Bjorn reached out to touch her arm, attempting to stop her from moving any further forward.

  “Sush.”

  “Sorry.” She whispered back.

  Instead of acknowledging her apology Bjorn went back to observing. There were a total of 20 buildings that comprised the whole place. Rough wooden palisades had been built around the exterior of the buildings. It was had to tell exactly from where they were at but the houses were no larger than single bedroom houses. There was a gap in the palisade that had to be the entrance to the town.

  The worst part about it was there were absolutely no signs of life or even signs that life had been there. There was no blood splatter that they could see that would indicate that someone was killed. No splotches of dirt where blood mixed in giving the dirt a crusty look. No signs of a struggle whatsoever.

  After nearly half an hour of observing Bjorn finally said. “You stay here, I am going to go into town and take a look around.”

  “No, let me. I-” Adriana started to say when Bjorn stopped her.

  “I don't want to hear any arguments. I have the best chances to get out alive if it is a trap. I am faster, more agile, and have more experience. That and you have better range with your bow. Currently I can't do anything with a bow, and your arrows can out range my spells. You stay here and I will go check it out.”

  Adriana looked like she wanted to argue instead she set her jaw and nodded. “Be careful.”

  Bjorn just gave her a grunt before slipping off into the thick waist high grass and she lost sight of him. Slowly Bjorn made his way down into the mini valley that someone ended up building a village in. As he drew nearer to the gate nothing really stood out to him. Drawing closer he got a better view of what the wood looked like.

  There were obvious wear patterns of where hundreds of hands slid across the palisade as they left or came back to their small town. The wood wasn’t anything special. The only major thing that stood out to Bjorn about the gate was the fact that there didn’t seem to be a way to close it. An odd choice by Bjorn’s standards.

  Looking down into the dirt it was hard/ almost impossible to pick out individual foot prints or paths based on what was happening in the dirt. Hundreds or even thousands of feet had walked through the gate over the years packing the soil down.

  Just so that Adriana knew that Bjorn was doing good where he was he dropped stealth briefly while off to the side of the entrance to the village and gave her a thumbs up. From her vantage point it was extremely easy to see Bjorn when he materialized. He briefly appeared giving the universal sign for all is well before his body took on that almost transparent look again. He slipped through the gate and she lost sight of him again.

  Bjorn slowly began to make his way around town following the palisade wall to make sure that nothing had to potential to attack him from behind. As he walked he once again thought about how weird it was that there wasn’t any sign of a struggle or some sort of blood trail. When he finished his first lap and saw nothing he moved on to closer towards the center of town.

  The buildings of the village seemed to be arrayed in several small rings. The largest and furthest out of the buildings was where Bjorn started looking. There were several houses that looked to have been ransacked as there were tables overturned and broken chairs that were strewn about. Nothing inside the houses still screamed a scuffle. Even with the broken furniture it looked as if the buildings were rooted through after the fact rather than overturned in a scuffle.

  Moving on to the second of the the two rings it looked closer to what he expected. There was a broken door here or there. One even hung just by a single hinge on the bottom of the door and the upper part of it was hanging uselessly. The scenes inside this building was the exact same as what he had seen in the outer buildings. Nothing in particular that seemed to either be alive, or too interesting. This of course was subject to investigation when he had fully cleared the village.

  In the end there was only a single house left that he hadn’t explored. The village was built in two rings surrounding this house. Its exterior indicated that it was potentially the only house in this entire place that had a second room built to the inside. Even with its larger frame he didn’t believe that it was safe.

  “Come on. It’s going to be the last house. Why does it always have to be the last house?” He mumbled to himself almost so quiet that he could barely hear it himself. He whispered under his breath pointing out how dumb it was to explore the last house. Eventually he got to the door and took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When his lungs were empty he lifted the latch on the door and it swung inwards on well oiled hinges.

  The first thing that he noticed immediately was the sound of flies buzzing around inside the building. The second thing he noticed was the stench. The smell was something Bjorn has become intimately familiar with over the years. It was the combination smell of fecal matter, dried stinking blood, and bile from the entails. Finally the last thing he noticed was the pile of bodies inside the building. By his guess looking at the pile it was somewhere between 30 and 40 bodies.

  He swore under his breath briefly before letting the door swing closed on its own. He took a few moments to digest everything he saw before he made his way back out of town and up to the hill Adriana was on overwatch on.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “I found the villagers, they are all dead.” Bjorn whispered when he drew close enough.

  She too swore under her breath. “Why did they kill them? What do we do?”

  “The way I see it we have a few options here. One is that we ignore this village and just keep following the trail. Another option is that we could explore the town and see why they attacked this town. The last option is we deal with the bodies first before we pick one of the first two options.”

  “We do the last one right?” Adriana asked.

  “Is it worth the time spent?”

  She got an almost offended look that crossed her face. “Everyone deserves to have their body to rest.”

  Bjorn just looked her in her eyes. “Everyone?”

  The offence left her face and it was replaced by an uncomfortable look. “I guess not everyone. But that doesn't matter here. They didn't deserve to die. Where are they? In their homes?”

  He shook his head and he pointed to the single building in the center of town. She let out a little gasp. “They are all in there? How many?”

  “Probably 35, maybe 40.” Bjorn stated matter of factly.

  “There is no choice now then. These people were innocent, they deserve to pass on to wherever we go when we die.” There was steel in her voice. “If you don't want to help me then don't, but I will put them to rest if need be. If you don’t want to wait than you can just leave me here.”

  She gave him a defiant look like. Eventually Bjorn sighed and acquiesced “Fine. You start working on digging a hole. My hand makes it hard for me to be of much use. While you work I will work on exploring the village and finding out why they were attacked. Once I am or you are done then we help the other with their task. Finally we will lay them to rest and then we move on. Agreed?”

  She looked like she wanted to say more but decided against it. “Fine. Agreed.”

  “Before we start though I want to scout east from here and see where they are going. I want to make sure that this isn't a trap.”

  She nodded. “Alright stay here and keep an eye on the village.”

  Bjorn spent half an hour exploring the area around the village and found absolutely nothing that indicated that there were people left alive. Or that Kairon's group turned around. So he made his way back to town and met up with Adriana.

  Once he gave her the all clear they made their way into town. Against Bjorn's suggestions she insisted that she look at what they were working with. Just as he knew it would go she took one look at the pile of dead bodies, accidentally caught a whiff of the smell and promptly threw up, adding to the stench.

  She got to work digging a hole with one of the shovels that Bjorn stored in his bag of holding before leaving for this trip. At the same time Bjorn began exploring the village. He first started on the outer ring of the village and was quite thorough. The only unfortunate part was that it appeared those responsible were as well. After half a day of searching he came away empty handed.

  Almost everything inside the houses were normal useful items, plates, forks, chairs, pots, pans, working knives, bottles, etc. On more than one occasion he found sections of floor boards that had been ripped up, or dressers that had been smashed. Next to each one was some sort of identifier of it once being a stash. There were empty bags or empty boxes, or small strongboxes that had once been filled with this town's worldly possessions.

  After he finished with the outer ring he moved on to the inner and ended up finding that it was basically the same story. Plenty of kitchen supplies and normal household items, but nothing really worth anything. More than that there was nothing here to identify why Kairon’s crew decided to massacre this village.

  Disheartened, he made his way over to Adriana and helped her digging the hole. He filled her in on how he found jack squat and they continued to work in silence. When it was finally getting close to evening they felt like they had made enough progress on the hole that it was time to start filling it with bodies.

  During the day they had propped the door to the house open as well as opening one of the windows so that some of the stench of the dead bodies began to dissipate. By the time they got to moving the bodies it was almost bearable to be inside to where it didn’t tie Adriana’s stomach into knots. The moving part of the whole project actually turned out to be one of the slowest part of the work.

  When the villagers had been killed their bodies had been piled haphazardly on top of one another. This led to an issue all on its own, as the bodies had been dead long enough for rigamortis to set in, making it nearly impossible to detangle the bodies and pull them out. On more than one occasion Bjorn had to use his dagger to cut tendons so they could remove the bodies.

  The contents of the pile was difficult for Adriana to handle. There were men, women, and children of all different kinds of races as well as of different age groups. There was a baby that couldn’t have been a year old that was missing its head, jagged teeth marks painting out where Gnack must have taken a bite. The oldest was a human woman who looked to have been in her 90’s. Most were fairly young probably between their 20’s and 40’s.

  42, that was the final count of bodies that they pulled out of the pile. When they lay the last body to rest they were going to just bury the bodies, then he remembered how Meira insisted on burning the bodies of their friends. Trusting his instinct on what Meira had said, they decided to burn the bodies.

  Luckily for them he had found a pot of some kind of oil that they could put on the bodies so it would be easier for the bodies to burn. After he retrieved it and made it back to the pit it was getting close to suns down again. He opened the pot of oil and began wetting down the bodies. When he was almost finished that same uneasy feeling he and Adriana experienced the night before began to settle into his stomach again.

  For a second he wasn’t sure what to do then the feeling in his stomach got worse. “Burn the bodies.” Bjorn said in a shout to Adriana.

  Springing into action she moved to jump down into the pit. Bjorn was watching the body directly underneath where he was standing. It’s eyes which had been empty looking in the dying light began to take on an unnatural red glow. He watched it happen and realized he was being a dumb ass. It would take Adriana a while to start the fire, all she had was flint and steel that she could create the sparks needed to light the pit on fire. Bjorn had the solution and it would only take 1 second for it to happen.

  “Stop.” Bjorn shouted as her foot began to fall into open air. His training kicked in. As soon as she heard Bjorn’s voice telling her to stop she folded her knee that was planted on the ground, at the same time she threw her torso back. This arrested her forward momentum and instead of ending up in the bottom of the pit she ended up on her back.

  Bjorn didn’t register if Adriana was able to get away safely or not. His mind was solely focused on casting a spell he hadn’t had to use very often. With a gesture from his hand and a single word of power, orange light began to condense at the tips of his fingers. Mana flowed out of his body condensing at a rapid rate at the end of his hand. Just as quickly as it formed it shot away from his outstretched palm.

  A jet of flame shot forth and into the piled bodies at the bottom of the hole. The reason why he hadn’t used the spell all that much was that Firebolt had a habit of exploding when it impacted its target. He could have in theory used it to start a fire but it usually ended up with burning debris in a several foot radius around the impact site.

  Even though it generally was rather hard to start a body on fire due to the water content inside the oil had no issues. In the second that it took for the firebolt to condense and slam into the undead more and more of the eyes began to get the same red glow in their eyes. The first one that Bjorn noticed was the one that started to move first. Which was why it was the target of his spell.

  The jet slammed into the chest of the creature as it tried to get to its feet. Finding the ready full source the flames quickly caught the oil on fire. Once the first bit caught it was like a flame thrower almost the entire hole caught on fire as the rest of the oil caught. There were only 3 bodies left that hadn’t been coated in oil. To rectify that issue Bjorn threw the clay pot down on the last three bodies. It shattered when it came in contact with the bodies, this coated them in the last of the oil. Just as quickly the flames spread to them as well.

  As the fire began to eat away at the corpse an unholy sounding scream emanated from the entire trench. Almost as one all 41 mouths of the corpses opened and released their wails of agony all at once. They slowly got to their feet and tried to climb out of the hole that was dug. There was little success.

  The first few to get to their feet began to try an climb out of the hole. The majority of the bodies though very quickly burnt up and their lifeless corpses fell back down to the ground where their flesh continued to be consumed to fuel the fire. Three of the corpses managed to get to their feet and try to climb out of the hole. It was at this time that Bjorn used his Identify ability on the creatures.

  As Bjorn watched these newly born undead struggle to survive all he felt was pity for the creatures. They didn’t deserve this. They didn’t deserve to be born. As much as he was loathed to admit it, almost everyone deserved to be buried. Almost no one deserved for their corpse to be defiled, for their body to become a desecration.

  The struggle of these creatures was actually more of a mercy. They deserved to pass on. Their souls didn’t deserve to be stuck on this plane until their body was destroyed. They deserved to pass on to whatever life awaited everyone after death. So the best thing he could do was wait, and watch. To make sure that none of them escaped.

  To that end of the three that got to their feet and tried to escape the hole they found themselves in 2 of them ended up burning up and dying. After death they fell back down the embankment of the fire. The last one actually made it up to the top of the pit and started after Bjorn.

  Unfortunately for the corpse Bjorn saw it coming and got to it first. When he got to the corpse he picked his foot up and sparta kicked the creature back down into its pyre. Even though it tried to escape the powerful kick, it was a newly born low level undead, it was naturally a weak creature. Not that it overly mattered either way as the flames ate the meat of the corpse it lost whatever strength it did have rather quickly.

  In a matter of seconds after the majority of the corpses had been consumed by the fire and a few after that they stopped moving. Something that surprised Bjorn though was how long the pyre burned. It took over 4 hours for the flames to finally die out. During that time they both stood there looking at the fire making sure that for some reason the undead would not come back to life. Early on in the burning process Adriana had to step away. The smell from the corpses was too strong for her to handle at first. After around 30 minutes of burning the sickly sweet smell of fat burning and being rendered into fuel for the fire dissipated just a little. Making it so that Adriana could stand being around the flames.

  When the flames finally did burn down towards coals a small dot of blue white energy began to slowly form over the chest of each of the bodies. This time the feeling of unease didn’t form so they decided to stay in place. Over the course of a few minutes the blue white energy slowly leaked out of several places on the corpse. Slowly one by one the dots of energy began to wink out. It seemed to be size based, but it was hard to entirely judge as there didn’t seem to be any correlation between the size of the body and the size of the orb before they winked out of existence.

  Over the course of several minutes almost all of the orbs of energy had winked out of existence. There was just one orb left over as it continued to grow over the chest of the corpse Bjorn kicked back into the pit. Finally the energies stopped leaking out of the corpse. This time instead of winking out, it just continued to hover there above the corpse.

  Adriana made as if she was going to climb down into the pit to get a closer look at the orb, but Bjorn stopped her. “Don’t we don’t know what that is.”

  “But it’s so pretty and I don’t feel like it means to harm us.”

  “Everyone knows that touching random objects is how you get killed in movies.”

  “What’s a movie?”

  Before Bjorn got a chance to answer the movie question the orb changed. It pulsed briefly and began to expand. It grew in size and at the same time it grew more and more translucent. As it grew in size it began to take on the form of a humanoid body. At first all of its features were indistinct, as it grew in size it’s features slowly came into focus.

  The aberration in front of Bjorn’s eyes looked vaguely like the corpse that the orb condensed out of. Though it was hard to tell as several days of decomposition and the damage that was done to the corpse changed the appearance. It was safe to say that he was looking at the soul of another creature.

  Finally it surprised both Bjorn and Adriana again when it opened it’s mouth and spoke. “Thank you travelers. You have freed both me and my companions from a fate worse than death. How can we repay you?” It’s voice matched the visage of the ghost. It was light, airy, and seemed to come from all around them as it spoke.

  Adriana and Bjorn exchanged looks for a moment before Bjorn spoke. “Of course, it was the right thing to do, we are happy to put your souls to rest.” Adriana shot Bjorn a glare as he took credit for her idea. Oblivious he continued. “You don’t have to do anything for us. With that being said, we are looking for the ones who killed you, we are in need of catching up to them so we can put a stop to their heinous crimes that they have done to you as well as with me.”

  The ghost simply nodded its head at Bjorn’s words. When it didn’t say anything he decided to just keep talking. “So my only question is how long ago did they attack you?”

  “That is simple 4 days ago the group you have been tracking entered our little town. At first they were welcomed as they were kind and helped prepare food for the night. They promised to pass on in the morning. In the morning they had completely changed and they rounded us all up and began torturing us. By noon they had killed several of us through their ministrations and each time we died they would pile our bodies in the center of town in my house.”

  Adriana decided to ask a question, not satisfied with Bjorn’s one question. “How long ago did you all rise from the grave?”

  “Last night was the first night that our malice energy was enough to animate our corpses. The energy could only last as long as night had befallen the land. I am not sure why but I got the sense that in a few more days that wouldn’t even be true.”

  Bjorn nodded at the answer. “Do you know why your town was attacked?”

  “Among all of the torture that they did to us for pleasure, they were also looking for knowledge. You see our town is situated near an old building that was a part of the grove elves empire that used to rule this land. I don’t know why exactly they wanted to know. We warned them though, everyone who entered never came back out. “

  Bjorn thought for a moment and pulled out his map. “How far away is it? Can you point it out on the map?”

  The ghost floated forward a bit so it’s feet were just barely short of coming over the lip of the pit. It leaned over and studied the map for a few moments before it jabbed at the paper with it’s ghostly finger. It phased right through the map but Bjorn got a prompt.

  You have become aware of a point of interest. Would you like to add this point of interest to your map? Yes/No.

  Bjorn mentally clicked yes and the prompt disappeared. On the map was now a point that was marked with a small triangle icon right were the ghost pointed. He was going to remark at how impressive it was that a ghost was able to read a map, understand their location, and identify where the building was. Not that it mattered.

  The ghost was normally transparent, now however it’s form began to dissipate. “I don’t have long. I want you to promise me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “Make them pay for what they did for us. You might want t-” It’s speech was cut off as it’s form fully became transparent and it finished fading away.

  Bjorn and Adriana were quite for a moment looking at the space where the ghost had been. “Well, at least we now know that souls are real.”

  “What?” Adriana asked.

  “Back on earth there is much debate if a soul exists or not, with the fact that we have no magic on earth it is harder to prove than you might think.”

  She just gave him an odd look. “Whatever, shall we finish burying the corpses before we head towards that place the ghost pointed at.”

  “Normally I would but It is dark, and on top of that I feel like we should repay the kind ghost for giving us a hint for us to hunt down.”

  “That makes sense, let’s start burying the bodies.”

  Bjorn shook his head. “I know you probably want to listen to me, but you should go get some rest. You need more than me anyways, As you sleep I will fill in this hole giving them a proper send off and we will continue in the morning.”

  In the morning Adirana awoke to find that Bjorn had actually managed to fill in the hole, even though she had no idea how it happened due to his lack of a hand. They took off for the point marked on the map. It took the better part of a day's travel to get to the point. As they walked towards the east north east both of their attentions were elsewhere.

  They both were contemplating what the ghost said but both in two separate parts of its speech. Bjorn focused on the last request of a spirit as it traveled on. Adriana was focused on trying to figure out what the ghost was saying before it disappeared.

  As they traveled the woods began to thin which was odd due to the fact that they should still be deep in the forest. They were both so distracted that they almost didn’t hear the voices drifting through the woods as they drew nearer to the point.

  When they finally did notice they immediately dropped into stealth and began slowly approaching where the voices were coming from. As they grew closer the voices and words began to make more sense little by little.

  Finally there was a break in the tree line and they got a good view of Kairon’s party. As he began counting there were 10 people above ground, all in various states of relaxation. He recognized all but 1 of the people. His vision was sharper than his hearing was so even though he could see them sitting or standing and talking to one another but he couldn’t hear what was being said.

  Tentatively Bjorn slowly made his way closer so he could make out what was being said. “-ding here? It’s not like there is anything out here in the forest for us to do. I miss my little pleasure slaves.” The voice of Luna said when Bjorn got within earshot.

  “It’s not our place to question Kairon.” Vincent said.

  “How much longer is this going to take? Tslla asked. ”We have already been here for days, wasting precious time.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We stay as long as we need to. As per the boss’s command.” Vivian said as he scooted closer to Vinny.

  They didn’t have to wait for much longer as three voices began to draw closer to the group. This was coming from inside a building that Bjorn didn’t have any good view of from his vantage point. They were speaking some kind of language that Bjorn didn’t recognize. Taking a chance he drew nearer so it was easier to make out what was being said.

  “Bos’. You ‘ind wot ye wer loking fer?” Gnack said in his broken common tongue.

  “That I did Gnack. That I did. Pack up, let's move out.” Kairon’s clear confident voice sounded out.

  “Are you sure this tim-” Vivian began speaking but stopped abruptly. She wiped around pulling her bow off her back. Before she finished turning towards where Bjorn hid she had an arrow to her string and the string to her ear. She paused her eyes searching the area where Bjorn was stealthed.

  “What is it?” Kairon asked his gaze also settling on the area where Bjorn was now cowering.

  After what felt like ages she relaxed the tension on her string and lowered her bow. “Nothing, I just felt like we were being watched. It was probably nothing. What I was asking was are you sure this time? We don’t want to have to come back up here.”

  “I am sure. Don’t you worry. It’s time we head south for the next part of the plan.”

  “South? What’s south?” Vincent asked.

  “That is for me to know, and for you to find out later.” He said as the group began to move heading south.

  “Where are we going?” Brog asked.

  “Blackrock Bay.”