The acrid stench of burning carried to us on the breeze. My nostrils flared, affronted by the scent. A miasma of death, and pain. We stood, my husband and I, atop the crest of a hill. This part of rural Demacia was all hills. It was usually peaceful farming land. Not so, the hamlet we now overlooked. This place was a patch of dark blight, nestled among idyllic scenery. So… wrong. Almost every building had been razed. My husband, Lucian, shook his head slowly.
"How awful," he murmured.
I tossed my head, my top lip curling.
"People did this."
"Senna…" he warned.
It was the beginning of an old argument, one that I did not care to revisit. I smiled at him, flashing teeth, and strode purposefully toward the hamlet. He followed without comment. He was not one for conflict, my Lucian. He would face down a hoard of ravening undead with steely resolve, but human altercation? That was another matter. He wasn't spineless, though. He would play the long game. I was certain that sometime later, he would catch me during a soft moment. He would assault me with compassion and infallible logic; and he'd temper his words with such love for me that I would find my sharp tongue dulled, leaving me defenceless to the onslaught. He always won our arguments, in the end.
As we descended to the town, it grew more difficult to breathe. The heavy stench of destruction hung, seeming to make the air still and thick. Behind me, Lucian cleared his throat. An ember of rage sparked in my gut. Humans had done this. The city had known this might come, else Lucian and I would never have been here. They had known and had not cared to intervene. Demacia was losing its control of its outer regions… or perhaps the higher ups simply did not care. Both were inexcusable.
Standing in what I thought must have been a town square, I scanned the area for people. We were not here to save the lives of the villagers but neither was I inclined to leave people to die, pinned beneath the ruin of their quiet lives. There was no one. Not even corpses. The people here must have cleaned up after themselves. Which meant there were people somewhere. My focus switched from heroics to pragmatism. They may not need saving, but the people left, wherever they were, might be useful to us. I caught my husband's eye and saw that he had reached the same conclusion I had. He nodded his head, indicating that we should search the largely-collapsed remains of the torched buildings before setting off to find survivors. There was very little point questioning people if we were in the wrong place, although this hamlet did seem promising.
Splitting up, we wove our way through the destruction, looking for clues. It was grim work and dirty work. I strained to lift ashen beams, to scour through the filthy remains. Here and there, something survived. An embroidery, a worn piece of furniture, a child's doll. There was something obscene about it. I've moved corpses before. For some reason, the empty misery of this place made going through these buildings feel almost as sacrilegious.
A few hours into the search, my husband called out. I ran to meet him, to see what he'd found with my own eyes. My breath caught and a feeling of anticipation mingled with a bleeding sense of irritation in the pit of my stomach. Of course, he'd found it; and of course, it had been right in the open, after we'd wasted so much time doing heavy lifting. I licked my lips. Our prey was here… or at least nearby. The little effigy, sitting in the centre of a relatively untouched building proved it. It stared out at us with dead eyes, and sewn mouth but the three nails driven into its body spoke loud and clear. She was here.
Kalista.