Dhroo 13th, 4288: 38 Days in the mortal realm





We’ve arrived at Cortanna’s hometown. It was a very haunting welcome, if one could call it that. From above I watched my party enter the unusually still town. Descending from above to join with my group, I could hear Cortanna crying. From the way the town looked, being in it then, I figured I knew why. The town was empty of people. We walked around to the various homes and stables, finding nothing but animals dead or dying. Cortanna frantically rode Brier from house to house. I focused on the animals and went around opening up the pens. I figured if anything, might as well give them a slightly better chance to survive than to starve to death from neglect inside their pens.

It was quite dismal despite the sunshine that would break through ever so often. It seemed ironic that such a scene would have sunshine. Given a different circumstance, the weather would have been more welcomed.

We all eventually regroup with Cortanna. Isaac reported that he found a chalk circle in the middle of town. Cortanna stood up, the tears clear on her face, but her lips curled in anger.

“The blood of the lycans will spill for what they’ve done!” she declared. The anger I saw in her disturbed me some.

“Whoa, Cortanna," I began, "Technically it wasn’t the lycans." Cortanna looked at me with angry, confused eyes. "Think about it.Yes they’re involved, but who's the real cause behind all of it? It’s all Heironious and Erythnul. The werewolves are just puppets in their game. They're now subjected to carry out their orders whether or not they willfully or were forcefully sided with Them,” I defended. It wasn’t so much that I cared for the lycans that were caught up in this. From the information gathered and what I’ve seen, they’re no better either.

“Araja!" Cortanna snapped, "Unfortunately my family and my whole village is dead!” Her eyes then hooded and in a more sinister tone continued, “All involved will die!” We all stood frozen, shocked by her sudden blood thirst for revenge. What was one to say? No? I just wished I could have made her understand it was something more evil than those lycans that was the cause of it.

Cortanna wiped at her eyes. “I should have never left... All of this is my fault! I should have warned them about the werewolves!” she scolded herself.

“You knew there were werewolves here?” I asked. Cortanna scoffed at my question.

“I thought I was going crazy. Men turning into wolves then back again? My anger toward my father blinded me! I figured no one would believe me anyways. And now their blood is on my hands,” Cortanna went on, sounding melodramatic.

“What’s new?” Rekka suddenly interjected, “People die all the time. You can only hope that they are truly dead and not like those back at the cave, Billy... or worse,” Rekka said. Cortanna glared at her, not out of pure anger, but as though she was thinking Rekka didn’t get it. Rekka seemed to sense that and to which she continued, "Besides, it does sound to me like the werewolves are being used. Not that I’m not all for you hunting them down and killing the lot, but more likely than not, you might be the one who ends up killed. Yet if you want to go all out in a blaze of ‘Revenge Glory,’ I the blind girl won’t hold you back.

“Although, now that I think of it,” Rekka added, still not sensing Cortanna’s disinterest in her advice, “Billy might have already killed the werewolves involved in this. Isaac, how many did you two kill?”

“25,” Isaac said automatically.

“Yeah, that has to be all if not the majority-”

“Rekka! My family didn’t just died!,” Cortanna shouted, ”They were MURDERED! It wasn’t like these lycan’s weren’t aware of what they were doing either!” Cortanna said glancing my way. She then took in a deep breath, trying to maintain some control. In an almost inaudible mutter said, “And why should you care. It’s not like you ever had a family.”

And then we got to see a side of Rekka we hadn’t seen before. She stood up, almost looking at Cortanna but her face angled just to the right of her, her lips curled back.

“You’re right! I don’t care!” Rekka spat, rising to her full height of about 5 feet, “But don’t go acting all high and mighty with me! You have no idea what I’ve been through nor what my life has been like! You ran away from your family because you could. I ran away because it was Sir who was going to sell me off to do heaven knows what!” with that Rekka found the fence and followed it away in the best attempt of storming off as a blind person could. I, too, took that as my cue to leave.

It was an unfortunate situation to happen across. I suppose this was what the fate of Podunk would had been if we hadn’t intervened. I'll finish up now, seeing that the rest of the day is to be spent letting the two teenagers cool off.



