BoD Chapter 53 - Ruins (Patreon)

Woodsedge had seen  better days, of that Tyron was sure. He stood on the edge of the clearing, his  ten skeletons formed in a loose ring around him as he gazed on what had once  been a proud frontier town. The walls had sustained enormous damage during the  break, large sections looked to have come down due to shaking rather than  being knocked inwards by an impact. Not to say the rift-kin hadn't done their  work, large holes had been punched into the wall in two places that he could  see from this side. The size and strength of the monster required to deal such  damage to the structure was entirely outside of his experience.

"Fuck  me," Dove said. "They really went to town on the place. Let's get  inside and see what we can see."

"You're sure there won't be any of those powerful kin  around?"

"Yes, I'm  sure. They don't hang around and poke at ruins. Rift-kin are insane, berserk  creatures, driven to madness by the wild mana in their realms. They want to  hunt and kill, then hunt and kill some more. Once there was nothing here to  fight, they would have fucked off to find something else. That’s why they're  so destructive. They don't hold ground, or bunker down, or tire out. Once  they've found and destroyed everything they can, they rush off to find  something else they kick the shit out of."

"Fine,"  Tyron's hand gripped the hilt of his sword a little tighter. "Let's head  on in."

The grass had grown  longer around the outside of the city without anyone to clear it, though it  remained low. Normally it would be cut every week to prevent even the smallest  kin sneaking up to the gates through the brush. As they drew nearer the wall,  Tyron continually flexed his fingers and held his mind at the ready. If  anything jumped out, he wanted to be prepared. With ten of his skeletons  around him, he was as safe as he could possibly be.

Walking towards the  ruins of what had one short week ago been a thriving keep town, he didn’t feel  like it was enough.

Knowing that the  rift-kin were capable of this scale of destruction was one thing, but it so  rarely happened that seeing it person was shocking. Woodsedge was considered a  lower risk area, primarily for bronze ranked slayers with a sprinkling of  silvers. It wasn't even the most dangerous rift in the Western Province, yet  here he stood looking out on a level of devastation he never expected to see.

When they reached  the wall Tyron decided to walk around it until he found what remained of the  gates on the south side. Whenever he found a gap in the wall, he carefully  peeked through to see if he could spot any movement. He played his eyes across  the broken down buildings and rubble that littered the once clean streets with  care.

"What are you  doing? Get in there you gods cursed coward."

"Shut  up," Tyron hissed.

"There's  nothing here you dickhead. Get in there, I want to see."

Tyron took hold of  the skull and ripped open his pack before shoving Dove deep inside and closing  the top. He threw it back over his shoulder and tried to ignore the muffled  protests of the once-summoner. No matter what Dove said, he wanted to be  cautious. He was done taking unreasonable risks.

When he eventually  found the gate, it was surprisingly intact, though still ajar. Some  splintering could be seen around the edges where the monsters had clawed at  the wood, and it was here that he found his first remains. He stepped  carefully around the bodies that littered the ground and tried to look to  carefully at each individual, passing over the smaller shapes amidst the  carnage.

The flies were  thick in the air, as was the stench. Tyron took a little distance as pieced  together what had happened here. It was sadly predictable. When the residents  had fled from Woodsedge, they would obviously leave through the south gate,  being the furthest from the rift. It appeared as if the marshals and remaining  slayers had made their stand here, trying to protect the townsfolk to the last  moment as they fled the disaster.

They'd already been  dead, of course. There was no chance for these people to outrun the break, yet  of course they had tried. Seeing the pointless death and loss of innocent  lives stirred the old guilt in Tyron's gut, but along with it came a new  emotion: anger.

It didn't have to  be this way. His parents could have prevented this from happening. That was  what they did. They were the fixers,  the heroes. When there was a problem nobody else could fix, a disaster that  could not be prevented, they were the ones who galloped off into the sunset,  broad grins on their faces as they rushed into danger and left him at home alone.

Despite the rot and  maggots, he could still make out the expressions of horror and fear that  twisted the faces of these desperate people. Some were laden down with packs  or belongings, the little that they had tried to bring with them as they fled  their homes. Others had fallen by carts and wagons many of which were now  marked with the blood of the children who had huddled inside.

Wordlessly, he  extracted the cursing skull from his pack and pointed him at the tragic scene  of the south road. Dove took it in for a long moment before he spoke.

"Those fucking  pricks. It's hard to think I could hate them more, but here we are."

"You really  think they just let this happen? A break? They don't care an entire town is  just wiped off the map?"

"… They  wouldn't have anticipated the break. It's not like they can know in advance  when a rift is about to go nuts. But they could have done something about it,  they could have saved these people, but to do that, they'd have to let your  parents off the hook and call them off the hunt for you. I can't be sure why  they refused to do it, but they did. The end result was avoidable, but you  have to face reality. They care more about their power and authority than tey  do the people they are supposed to protect. Tens of thousands will die from  this break, or be displaced and have to flee their homes only to come back to  smoking ruins have to rebuild from scratch. But it will be rebuilt. It'll take a few months, but there'll be a new  keep are soon enough, fresh slayer graduates will fill it up and go back on  patrol, probably a few gold teams sent out of the capital to hold it down for  the next few years. The town will return, the businesses will come back, the  merchants will return. The farmland is still sitting there, people will snap  it up cheap and try and start a new life out of the cities. Ten years' time,  you might never notice that this had even happened."

"Except the  rift has grown wider."

"Except the  rift has grown wider. More powerful kin will come through, therisk of another  break is higher, and eventually someone will drop the ball and it'll happen  again, allowing the whole world to slide a little further into disaster."

As he moved a  little closer, Tyron was forced to step over the remains, one hand held to his  nose to try and block the stench. The fighting here had been intense, that  much was clear. The number of fallen rift-kin was astounding, piles of them  left to rot under the sun. The carnage spread down the road in patches.  Isolated pockets of resistance that had collapsed under the overwhelming  number of monsters all the way to the tree-line.

Tyron turned his  back on the scene without another word and began to pick his way into the  town. It shocked him. The once neat streets were littered with the dead and  rubble from collapsed or destroyed buildings. He carried Dove through the  ruined streets wordlessly, observers to the ruin that had come to Woodsedge.  There were signs of fighting in the streets. Buildings had been ripped open by  the ravening kin so they could destroy the living beings the inside.

It took a little while, but he  eventually made his way to the Butcher's shop where he'd had his brief  apprenticeship. Surprisingly, it was, for the most part, intact. With the help  of his skeletons and a well-placed magick bolt, he broke in the door down and  stepped inside. From the looks of things, there hadn't been anyone inside so  the kin had mostly left it alone. Even the meat in the back of the shop, which  appeared to have been left in a hurry, hadn't been touched. A shame is was  likely starting to spoil, there perhaps some had been stored cool enough to be  edible.

He noticed Hak's  prized knives were nowhere to be seen. Hopefully that meant he'd gotten out  early to stay ahead of the break. The odds were slim, but if he'd sensed the  danger in the air and left when the slayers were still planning to hold the  line, he might have gotten out, along with Madeleine and his wife Penelope.

"Any reason  we're looking at all this meat?" Dove asked.

"This was  where I learned the butchery skill," Tyron replied as he ran his hands  over the benches. "I wasn't here long, but the owner, Hakoth, was a good  man."

"I see. I also  mastered the handling of my meat not far from here. Over in the red light  district, we should check it out."

"You want to  visit the brothels? Now?"

"I don't  suppose there would be much point, now that you mention it. I don't suppose we  could find a shapely lady skull you could stuff a spirit into? I wouldn't mind  a little company. And when I say company…"

"Didn't you  get enough of an eyeful with Yor around?" Tyron rolled his eyes. Despite  being dead, the Summoner appeared to be largely irrepressible in his attitude  and humour.

"Yor is  certainly nice to look at, if a bit pale. You know, know that she's not around  I think I can be honest. She's too pale. Not as in, too pale for my taste, I mean too  pale to be real. Bedsheets look at her with envy. If she were any  whiter, she'd be see through. I feel like I should be able to see every vein  in her body."

"There's no  blood in her, why would you see the veins?" Tyron wondered, bemused.

"The veins  themselves have colour don't they?"

"I … guess?  I'm not sure actually."

"How many  people do you have to carve up before you can answer even the simple  questions? Come on, Tyron, get it together."

"Can we… not…  talk about it like that?" he winced.

"There's no  shame in it, kid. When life deals you Necromancy, you find human remains and  carve the shit out of them. No harm, no foul."

"Fine. Let's  just… keep looking around."

Dove didn't reply  which Tyron took for silent assent and the two continued to roam about what  was left of the town, going in and out of buildings and eventually made their  way up to the keep. The stone fort, built to house the slayers who risked  their lives to keep the kin at bay, was also largely intact. There was little  structural damage, most of the walls hadn't been caved in, despite some stone  being lost to the shaking.

"There  wouldn't have been many slayers around when the kin came through, so I don't  suppose the keep itself got much attention. There would have been some support  staff still here, but not many others. The bulk of the monsters would have  ripped through the town and then spread out along the south road. On the plus  side, that means there's probably a ton of good salvage in here. Too bad  you're so scrawny."

"The skeletons  can handle some of it."

"True."

As the sun beat  down on the keep, the two, along with the ten undead minions picked through  the keep, and indeed there was quite a bit to find. Slayers were often cash  rich and many had died in the rift, leaving their belongings behind. Not  wanting to be weighed down, Tyron took a generous amount of higher value  coins, replacing the bronze in his pouch with gold and silver where he could.

The real wealth  they found was in the armoury. It had largely been emptied in the defence of  Woodsedge, but even so plenty of arms remained. By the time they were done,  Tyron had been able to outfit each of his ten skeletons with new one-handed  weapon and shield.

If he had enough  magick, he might have been able to put armour on a few of them, but the added  weight would drain his energy too quickly.

As the hours  passed, Dove eventually spoke up.

"This would be  an incredible place to setup. There's a fair bit of food lying around. Decent  hunting nearby. Equipment and resources for your skeletons and a metric shit  ton of fresh human remains. There must be hundreds of them lying about. Think  of the research. Think of the levels!"

"Of course, it  isn't that easy," Tyron grunted.

"Nope. The  nobles will want this place up and running once they roll back the rift-kin.  Bury the dead, back to business as usual, the slimy fuckers. That means the  Magisters are already hard at work making someone else clean up their mess.  Depending on who's on the case, we can't know how quickly they'll reach this  place and you can't be here when they do. To be honest, we should get out of  here as quickly as possible."

"Right,"  Tyron said. "If possible I want to take a day or two to get as much as we  can before we leave."

"Cutting it  close. If you need to work overnight, do that and we can get the fuck out in  the morning. You need to leave this place behind and find somewhere else to  set up shop."

"Okay. First  thing's first though. I want a shower."

Inside the keep he  was able to find rooms equipped with all the enchantments required to wash  himself and for the first time in a while Tyron indulged himself in a full  body scrub, peeling weeks of filth of his skin. After pillaging a chest for  some fresh clothes that were a close enough fit, he felt like a new man.

With that done, he  rolled up his fresh sleeves and got to work. With the help of his skeletons he  was able to unearth an intact cart from the merchant district and begin to  load it with supplies. Preserved food, water, a small stash of coin, spare  weapons and armour took up space in the cart, but not much. The rest was  reserved for the most important cargo.

From the middle of  that day and through the night, Tyron grit his teeth and set himself to  butchering corpses. Along with his minions, he scoured the town, but found  most of the best prospects at the south gate. With so many remains on hand, he  could afford to be picky, and despite the damage that many had received, he  was still able to piece together full skeletons with relative ease.

Once the bones had  been stripped of flesh and washed, he set them out to dry in full sets, having  the skeletons place them separately. By the time morning came, he'd managed to  arrange twenty complete skeletons in neat piles on the ground. Once dry, each  went into its own sack which was then placed carefully onto the cart.

He was tempted to  take another shower after the grisly work, but knew he couldn't afford the  time. It took a bit longer for he and Dove to find an efficient way for his  skeletons to be harnessed to the cart. If he could raise a horse, he wouldn't  have any issues, but unfortunately he didn't have that ability as of yet.

So it was that his  skeletons were forced to act as mules, six of them arranged in two lines of  three to pull the heavy load. It was murder on his magick, and only left four  of his minions available for defence, but necessary. With this he would have  everything he needed for the short term future.

With their slow  place, it was already dusk by the time they made it back to the farm.