On the Hills of Eden

“Steady, girl, steady.”

Pallas set her hand on Strapi’s neck as the mare thrashed its head from side to side, as if trying to shake something from its face. It even came to a complete stop, refusing to budge and exhaling in stubborn defiance whenever Pallas tried egging it on.

Just before them, not ten metres away from where they were, stood the entrance to a little clearing. Which, if the waiter hadn’t deceived them, was the clearing where Mesimeos was located within.

“What’s wrong?” Pallas asked, bending over to look the mare in its eyes.

To which it huffed out stubbornly in response.

Pallas sighed, resigning to her fate. Carefully, she undid the ropes that tied Qingxi to her back, keeping her hands on her friend’s shoulder to keep her from falling as she pulled her feet from the stirrups and began the dismount.

Landing firmly on the soil below, she gently laid Qingxi down on the saddle, facing her head to the side to keep the faceguard from pressing onto her face.

She pulled Strapi to the side of the grassy clearing, now several times thinner than when it emerged from Kardia’s northeast exit. Ushering the mare into a fairly spaced spot between the trees, she took a rope from one of the satchels and used it to tie it in place.

“Stay here, okay?”

The mare stared at her in response.

“I’ll be back.”

Soon after doing a final tug on the rope to make sure it wouldn’t get untied, Pallas made her way over the village.

Dazed by the brightness of the late morning sky above, Pallas lifted a hand to shield her eyes just as she stepped out of the forest and into the clearing, its grass showered in a dazzling glow of dew and day.

And though it took a moment for her vision to adjust to the brightly lit clearing from the relative darkness of the shaded forest, she eventually managed to make out the village before her. The thirty or so houses seemed to have been arranged into a Y-shaped formation, each building haphazardly slapped onto the side of a communal path that formed the backbone of the respectably sized village.

That being said, though, she saw no signs of activity.

Somewhat unsettled by the silence that seemed to linger over the village, she looked around briefly before hastily walking towards the houses closest to her.

Just like the other houses she’d gleaned a glimpse of during her initial gander, they were more or less comparable in size- built to accommodate a family of four to five people if she were to guess. Each one seemed more or less sturdily built, contrasting the slipshod nature of the ones back in the Kardia. Some of them even had little rows of tilled land paired with wooden water buckets by their backsides, while others boasted mini grape vineyards and fruit bushes- some of which remained unharvested.

But she saw no one tending to the plants. No one watering them, no one harvesting their fruits and flowers or pruning their branches. Instead, all she saw was the occasional basket strewn across the grass in between the gardens and the forest beyond, its contents spilled out and left abandoned.

Before she stepped onto the packed dirt path that served as the village’s main connecting road, she decided to try and see if there was anyone perhaps hiding within the houses. Maybe she’d just come at a bad time, and everyone had decided to take an early siesta.

“Hello!” She put her hands around her mouth, shouting out into the open.

…

No response.

Well, okay. Maybe she wasn’t loud enough.

Turning to face one of the houses nearby, she tried again.

“Hello! Anyone home-”

But she stopped herself mid-sentence, her breath held in stasis as she felt a sense of dread crawl its way up from her bowels and into her throat.

The house’s door had been smashed open.

Immediately, she checked the door of the house across the street.

It was left ajar.

And as her eyes jumped from house to house all the way down the street, she saw as every single house either had its door left ajar or smashed in. Leading all the way to a large pile of tinder surrounded by a circumference of stone that had only been partially built-up. Though the rest of the stones lay neatly piled up not too far away from the waiting campfire.

This… Now this was certainly not normal.

With the feeling of her heart roaring back into action, she slowly approached the house with the door left ajar, deciding it would be best if she could slowly ease herself into what had transpired. But the moment she got within arm’s reach of the door, a cold, foetid smell sank deep into her nasal cavities and down into her throat.

But, somehow or rather, it smelt sweet. Sickly sweet. As though its revolting nature so overwhelmed her senses that her mind had deluded itself into perceiving a hint of sweetness amidst the putridity in an attempt to veil the true extent of its disgustingness. Even still though, undeniably, the malodour that seeped out of the tiny gap in the door carried with it the signs of putrefaction and of rot. Of death.

Even though she herself had grown accustomed to pungent scents of all sorts, she knew all too well from how rotten it already smelt that she wouldn’t be able to handle facing the air inside head-on.

So, she stepped back slightly, turning her head away to throw out any air in her lungs before filling her chest up to its very limits and pulling her undershirt up to cover her nose.

Now prepared, she went back to the house’s door, kicking it open gently with her boot so as to not touch its handle with her gloved hands. The miasma reeked so horribly that she felt even so much as touching the structure would soil her armour and give her some sort of disease.

And as the door creaked open, letting more and more light spill in to illuminate the interior’s dark, Pallas beheld the scene before her.

Strewn across the wooden floor covered in bright red, dried blood, were the mangled bodies of two people- one adult, and one elder.

Pallas quickly stepped aside, placing her back against the wall as she stiffened up in shock. Though she kept her eyes wide open and bathed them in the light of the day, the dark, blood-covered image of the house’s interior could not leave her mind.

And with the nauseous smell now having a source she could attribute it to, she only just barely stopped herself from dry heaving onto the packed dirt below.

Were all the houses like this?

Her eyes betrayed her, momentarily glancing into the broken doorway of the house opposite this one.

And her worst suspicions were confirmed.

She stumbled away from the houses, falling to her knees as she fought to catch her breath.

This couldn’t have been the Hashashiyyin.

There was no way they would’ve been able to get to Mesimeos before her. Moreover, the image seared into the back of her eyes told her the bodies had been dismembered and cleaved by something sharp and serrated, and not burnt and charred by the heat of their flames.

And judging by the intensity of the foetid stench, the bodies must’ve been left there for quite some time.

That being said, the blood spilled across the wooden floor in her memory told a different story. It was much more reminiscent of blood only a day or so old, directly challenging the idea that the bodies had been left for days to rot. Although, that could’ve simply been an observational error or a trick of the light.

Swallowing deeply, Pallas steadied her breath and held down the uneasiness in her stomach. Whatever had ravaged the village couldn’t have strayed too far from where they were.

From where Soleiman was.

But they couldn’t afford to stop where they were, lest the Hashashiyyin catch up to them. So, she put one foot in front of the other, resolving to at least try and figure out what had happened. So that if he and Rumi really were in immediate, immense danger, then she’d be able to figure out what would be best to do.

Step, step, step. The sound of boots against dirt, alone in the clearing. Stalked only by the distant rustling of winds off in the forest. Pallas kept her eyes to herself, keeping them affixed to the campfire ahead of her and stopping from them straying too far to either side. Refusing to so much as look at what remained of the villagers of Mesimeos.

Soon, she arrived at the village centre, and was face to face with the large campfire in the middle. There, she looked out onto the two roads that branched off, forming two streets lined with houses that each eventually led to paths into the forest. Some of which, at the very end of the branch that headed east, seemed to still have closed doors.

Before she could feel her spirits being lifted by hope, though, a quiet whining came into earshot. Like that of a wounded animal, whimpering and crying in pity for itself, calling out to no one.

Looking around, Pallas saw that a few carts covered in thick cloth sheets had been lined up facing the campfire, standing in between the village centre and a third branch of the road. This third branch was much shorter than the other two, and instead of leading out to a street lined with houses, terminated directly into the open clearing that led into the middle of the three forest roads opposite Mesimeos’ entrance.

She approached the carts, furrowing her brows in an attempt to fool herself into brave determination. And as she stood by the cart that housed whatever it was that made the loudest moans, she could somewhat make out what it was whining about.

“Cold… please…”

Over and over again, like a broken record.

Carefully, Pallas grabbed a hold of one of the cloth sheet’s edges and slowly lifted it off of the cart. Revealing the man that lay curled up in a foetal position inside, his skin covered in blue black spots and lesions that oozed slow black blood.

At once, the man cried out in agony, lifting his hands and using them to cover his face as the skylight struck his skin, sending him writhing weakly within the confines of the cart.

Hurriedly, Pallas threw the cover back on, leaving only a little slit through which she could see the man inside. She collected herself for a moment, thinking about what to say as the man’s screams faded to sobs and eventually back to whines.

“Hello?” she called out, testing to see if the man even had any mental capacity left to communicate outside of animalistic shrieking and childish moaning.

The whines slowly went silent, and sure enough, the man responded.

“The fire…”

Pallas turned to look back at the campfire, its tinder stacked nearly as tall as her.

“What about it?”

“Light it… and sing…”

“Sing what?”

The man groaned in annoyance, though it sounded more as though he were a child threatening to throw a tantrum if he didn’t get what he wanted.

“Farewell! Sing us farewell, before we have to go.”

Pallas stood in silence for a moment, afraid her immediate two word long responses would frustrate the man out of conversation.

“...Alright, sure. But where are you going?”

“Going… going to the forest… they will send us… they-”

The man stopped abruptly, making not a noise, not even so much as a background hum or a sniffle.

“They?”

“Oh,” he suddenly bemoaned. “Run, please! From the beast! From the beast!”

Pallas whipped her head back and forth, checking the paths behind the carts, the two streets she hadn’t yet explored and the path behind her.

Nothing there.

“Oh, oh!” he cried louder and louder. The cart shifted about slightly, its wood creaking in harmony with the man as he writhed about, legs kicking and arms smacking the insides of the cart. “No! Please! Forgive us! Leave!”

Pallas backed away slightly, watching as the man’s struggle grew in intensity. The cart jumped about more and more, threatening to fall over.

“Leave! Leave!”

But it didn’t. And over time, the man’s cries slowly died back down, the fear and terror in his voice sinking once again beneath the waves of morose sorrow that forever permeated his diseased murmurs.

“Leave…”

“Sir?”

The man sniffled slightly.

“The beast… the ataphoi… It went west. Please, leave…”

The man, apparently no longer interested in any songs or in lighting the campfire, simply returned to whining to himself. Though this time his whines were interspersed with sobs and cries, as his mind dragged him again and again through the painful recollection of what had transpired not two nights before.

Pallas found herself staring off into the distance, her eyes focused on nothing as she looked down the crooked street that pointed west from the village centre. Lost in her thoughts.

Well, at least that meant it was headed away from where Soleiman and Rumi were coming from.

Pallas exhaled in relief, her fears settled and her questions answered, at least for the moment. They would continue on the path forward, and hopefully the next village they came across hadn’t been as brutally savaged as this one. For only then could they hope to reunite with the other half of their party and receive the support they needed.

Not wanting to spend any more time lingering about the village and the aura of oppressive silence that came with it, she began on a light jog back the way she came. She’d leave the men in the carts be, for their fates had already been long sealed.

Though she herself had not yet seen a victim of Deathblight so far down into the disease’s progression up until then, she knew at the very least the dangers the disease carried and the caution it warranted. And that sufferers of the pestilence across the continent and its myriad of nations and cultures were always cleared from centres of habitation and left to rot in the wilderness for good reason.

All thanks to that one time where Soleiman sat her down and told her all about that cool new book Rei had acquired for him. Though, admittedly, she would have preferred not to learn about the plight upon life itself and how it had culled the world’s population by two thirds while in the midst of her chicken stew dinner.

She took her mind off of the weight of the situation momentarily, letting herself float back in time to when she and Soleiman still roamed the Minervan countryside together under Rei. Safe and secure and able to enjoy life, at least from her perspective. But she soon quickly brought herself back down, realising the folly of reminiscing over her past while walking the freshly massacred ruins of a village.

Soon, she stepped off of the packed dirt of the village’s paths, resolving to leave some sign for Soleiman and Rumi to pick up on to know where she was headed. A sign that would somehow have to elude the eyes of the Hashashiyyin and remain in place until their arrival. A sign that would have to also be at least somewhat detached from the horrors lurking within each house so that the two of them wouldn’t end up missing it because of how gruesome the state of the village was.

Because relatively speaking, she was far more resilient than Soleiman when it came to disgusting things. And if even she ended up dry heaving at the sight of what lay beyond the doors, she didn’t want to know how they’d end up faring.

So she pondered, eyes drifting across the village ruins.

And she knew what she’d have to do. But not if she had the strength to do it.