An Old Legend

I walked down the streets of this old, dilapidated city again. This time, I walked towards the outskirts of the city. It was the duty of the hunters that chose to inhabit a city to protect and patrol it. Cities and forts were chosen to be placed at specific spots to maximize the chance of beasts encountering the fort first. People in the city and the fort were ordered to regularly swap positions in the attempt to keep their minds and bodies fresh. The reality, however, was that the replacements always showed up hungover or drunk. Instead of patrolling and resting while stationed in the city, they spent most of their time drinking, figuring that if a beast made it close to the city, someone would ring the alarm before too much damage could be done. The younger faces would do their duty and patrol, but would quickly realize how boring the role was, and would inevitably end up spending more time in the city or further out looking for something to fight. I chose the latter.

The city was situated in a wide, flat valley with a forest between it and the fort. The chance of anything crawling its way over the surrounding mountains, despite being relatively low lying, was slim. It was just cold enough for the tops of the mountains to be covered in a blanket of snow at all times of the year, with a constant, howling wind thoroughly freezing anything that attempted to pass through. The gaps in the mountains were pelted incessantly by freezing rain, further making a journey through them even more miserable.

I remember hearing, likely in someone's drunken ramblings, that the forest was a topic of contention during the building of the city. Some argued that it should be cut down to allow a clearer line of sight down the length of the valley to give the city more time to prepare in the event of a beast wave, while others argued that it would slow down any beasts that made it past the fort, preventing too many beasts from converging on the city at once. Additionally, it would also slow down only beasts when a fort was overrun, while hunters would know their way through the forest well enough to make it to the city well before the arrival of the beasts. After some arguing, the forest ended up being kept there.

As I walked down the cobbled city streets, I realized I was soon to pass by the hospital, and the words of the barkeep replayed in my mind. My footsteps stopped. Something wasn't right in his story. The men had run for hours and had only arrived this morning. The timeframe was both too long and too short. Thinking this, I once again began walking, this time at a quicker pace.

I knew that journey fairly well. It was something an experienced hunter could do in half a day, leaving at sunrise and arriving at sunset, or the opposite if they were insane. Since the men had arrived in the morning, the should have left at nightfall, but that would have been when the attack started, and they surely wouldn't have abandoned the fort at the drop of a hat. Another strange thing to me was his use of "young men". The man wasn't old himself, barely older than I was, in fact, so for him to call them young….

My thoughts trailed off as I arrived in front of the hospital, breathing a bit heavier than usual. I pushed open the doors using a little more force than I intended. They slammed against the inside of the walls, causing everyone to turn to stare at me, but I didn't have the time to care.

"Where are the runners?"

"Everyone here runs, kid, you'll have to be a bit more specific than that. If you're looking for a friend, I recommend waitin-" a nurse directly opposite me in the room spoke up first, but I was immediately annoyed by him not connecting what I felt were obvious dots.

"The runners that came in this morning! Where are they?" I shouted, suddenly feeling a rising anxiety. I approached the nurse that spoke up like an avalanche, grabbing his shirt and standing over him as he knelt next to someone pretending to writhe in pain on his cot.

"If I have to ask you again, I'll be asking for payment before I leave," I quieted my voice down, not wanting to potentially panic everyone in the room, but I seemed to scare the nurse even greater than before.

"Ha-hallway to your right. Third door down is the room with the two survivors. Body storage is at the end of the hall."

I shot him a glare before rushing over to the hallway he mentioned. There were doors on either side of the hallway, finding myself increasingly annoyed by the nurse I questioned. I decided to check the one on the right first, and thankfully lucked out. Two bodies slept in cots, wrapped in blankets, with another nurse watching over them. She immediately stood up as I entered.

"The doctor has requested these two be left to sleep until they recover. If you wish to ask them about their report, you must wait until they wake up."

"No need, I think I got all I need."

There were two boys lying in that room. Boys. Not men. One would be hard pressed to even call them young men. So young, I questioned whether they were even old enough to be allowed to come out here, not to mention being stationed at a fort. I rushed down to the end of the hall, feeling the urgency of the situation growing by the second. I reached the last door in the hallway; this time it was thankfully in the middle instead of on one side. When I walked in, I was met with the sickening stench of death and decay. There were a few bodies left on tables throughout the room. The walls were lined with slots for bodies, kept there while they waited for a member of the Clergy to read their last rites. The table in the middle of the room, right in front of me when I walked in, had the freshest body. There was a sheet draped over the body, with only the face showing out of it.

I stood there for a second, closed my eyes, clenched my jaw, then turned and left, gently closing the door behind me. I walked quickly through the hospital, ignoring the confused looks of the nurses and patrons as I made my way back outside.

Then I started running.

I ran towards the town hall, where a record of everyone who entered the city was kept. As I ran, I pictured the face on that body, and a tear crept its way out of my eye.

A boy, barely over a decade of age.

Eyes stuck open; pupils seemingly exploded, dyeing both eyes completely black.

Face twisted in horror, jaw ratcheted open at a nearly unnatural angle.

The corners of his lips ever so slightly curled up.

An image of an ungodly, unnatural, writhing mass of flesh one may call a beast burned into the bottomless darkness of his eyes.