Kreilis limped through the ashes of a town he helped burn.

His broken left leg was in a roughy improvised splint; and he ‘walked’ along on a pair of improvised crutches. His making of these had used up the last unburned wood in the house he had been abandoned in the night before.

He passed a few houses, blackened frames rising like skeletons from piles of ash. His eyes watered as wind blew the ever-present ash into his eyes.

The town was dead silent now. The inhabitants were, Kreilis suspected bleakly, all dead, or else taken with by the army on its march. The only sound was the howling wind, and the crunching of ashen gravel beneath his boots.

Every other step sent a lightning bolt of pain up his leg. He gritted his teeth and pushed through the pain, though once when his foot landed just wrong, the pain grew so intense he nearly blacked out. He couldn't afford to, though. He was alone in an empty village in the backcountry. To be alone was to be vulnerable, and this was the last place he wanted to be vulnerable. He had to get back to civilization, fast.

Well, this had been civilization yesterday morning, Kreilis mused grimly. Then he helped destroy it.

Well, ‘helped’ was a strong word. A conscript barely old enough to grow the most pitiful wisps of facial hair, he had little choice one way or the other.

He found himself in the town square. Villages in the northern forests had a particular design, buildings laid out in concentric circles around a central clearing, with a great fire pit used for festivals in the center of that.

The tavern was in ruins. The wattle-and-daub walls were blacked, the front caved in entirely. A trough had been carved in the ash in front of it where barrels of beer and wine had been rolled away, one at a time. Typical.

Temples are made of stone, and not wood, so it still stood. But the doors were missing and the windows were broken. Kreilis didn’t even need to look inside it to know that anything of value inside would be stolen. Idols of gold and silver, tapestries, rare books (assuming the dumbasses recognized their value), carried away.

The central fire pit was full to the point of overflowing with ashes and bones. The pit was twenty feet across, and fairly deep, yet the heap was eye level. The mass-pyre, while burning, would have been far larger, easily a hundred bodies would have been fed into it, assuming they were all adults.

One skull, very obviously not an adult’s, seemed to be staring directly at him.

Kreilis’s stomach churned. A shiver ran through him. It was cold, but that was not why he was shivering.

It was very cold though, the northern autumn breeze buffeting him even harder without anything nearby to break the wind. Waves of visible heat were still rising from the ash heap, but the idea of standing any closer to the heaped cremains of the townsfolk made his skin crawl.

He had to get out of here. Along the southern road, there would be an inn. In his current state, he could get there by nightfall, but only if he left immediately. He couldn't risk traveling at night, for fear of the things nightfall would bring.

There came a crunching noise from the ashen heap. The ash shifted, as if something was moving inside it.

In an instant Kreilis’s mind ran through the list of creatures it could be, coming up empty. The only monster that would spawn from something like this would be maybe a salamander, and even Kreilis wasn’t that unlucky. Kreilis tried to back away, but the ashen gravel shifted under his feet and his crutches, and he fell back, his broken leg screaming in his nerves.

The surface of the ash heap collapsed in a mini-avalanche of soot and bone-shards. Smoke and fine ash dust rose into the air, and something lurched out, face planting flat before getting to its feet and taking a few unsteady steps.

It was a girl. Around Kreilis’s age, maybe a year or two younger. Bald, nude, her skin coated in ash, but seemingly ash-colored itself, as well. She fell again to her hands and knees, coughing furiously, before collapsing prone on the ground. She laid there for some time, the only sigh of life the little clouds of ash her breath disturbed on the ground. With a grunt, she heaved herself up to her feet and began walking, an unsteady, drunk-esque zigzag, down the street.

Kreilis’s heart leaped into his throat as she came closer to him, before she passed him by. Either she hadn’t seen him, or she had not cared. Either was a possibility.

Kreilis, after several false starts and another jolt of pain from his leg, got back to his feet. It was again on his feet. I should be going now, he thought to himself. That thing that just crawled out of the firepit could be a zombie or a monster, and even if she was human, she would probably want to kill him for helping burn her village. He should be grateful she ignored him, take the win, and run, while he has the chance.

Kreilis sighed, and hobbled after the ashen girl.

Elisile lay in the ash heap for some time, a jumble of memories from the night before sloshing too and fro, images and sensations disjointed and incoherent.

She had been asleep in bed, and there had been a loud banging and shouting. Someone had grabbed her, dragged her from her house, and led her down the street by the arm. She had still been half-asleep the whole time, so specifics escaped her. Elisile remembered many hands and blades against her skin. The smell of smoke. Pain. Lots of pain, more and more severe as the night went on, climaxing with an explosion of pain along her throat. Her last memory was of laying in the fire pit, choking on her own blood, as one of her neighbors landed atop her.

Elisile had died.

She knew that she should care, but, for some reason, didn't.

She was far more concerned by how hot and itchy she was. Many hard, sharp things pressed into her body from every angle, and she felt a powerful urge to cough, though the weight pressing down on her and the ash in her mouth made this impossible.

She tried to squirm, to loosen the ash around her, to little success. Her surroundings shifted, very slightly. She tried again, to slightly greater but still meager effect. Again. Again. Again.

She felt an emotion rising in her chest. Not unlike panic, but distant, as if she was not herself, but some outside observer, looking down on an ash-tombed insect. She squirmed more frantically and aggressively, before she felt the ash heap tremor and shift around her, and the weight on her suddenly decreased.

She lurched forward, the ash falling away around her, and fell flat on her face. She spat the ash from her mouth, coughing furiously in the aftermath. Her eyes were full of ash, so she rubbed them aggressively with her ash-coated hands. It didn't help much. After several false starts, she rose, unsteadily, to her feet.

Out of habit, and not knowing what else to do, Elisile set out towards home.

As she walked, slowly and shakely, her eyes cleared out the ash. The buildings she passed one at a time were all in ruins, some with their doors knocked in off their hinges, others burned down entirely.

The tavern was still smoking.

Lani’s smithy was a pile of rubble, anything small enough to be carried away, all the tools and metal ingots, carried away.

The house where Widow Lauren and her children lived was mostly intact, but the front door was missing. The inside was dark, but the smell of rot flowed powerfully from the open door. Elisile refused to look inside, or even stop.

The town was dead silent, save the screaming wind.

Another emotion came across her mind, looming dread. It would be a stretch to say that she ‘felt’ it. More like she was aware of it, as it slid across her mind like oil on water, before settling into the growing hollowness in her stomach. As if it belonged to someone else, someone who felt further away with each moment. She was not herself, in that moment, but some outside other, observing impassively, directing languidly. She recognized the feeling, from dreams, and from once and only once in her waking life, when her grandfather had passed. A kind of numbing detachment. Events happened. Things were. And she was a ‘thing’, in these times. She was and she did.

As Elisile arrived at her family's house, she felt a spark of hope. It was small, faint, and brief, but she truly felt this one, cutting through the layer of numbness she felt thickening around herself. But it faded fast.

The two-story house looked intact from the outside, more or less. The door was gone, and the windows broken, but it stood upright. Then Elisile looked at the walls, the wattle-and-daub baked to stone like fired clay. And the inside was far too brightly lit.

Elisile walked inside.

The ceiling was gone, as was the floor of the second floor, and the thatch roof above that. Nothing stood between the cloudless sky and the ash-covered stone floor. The wind had pushed the ash into small drifts and dunes, like snow. The only thing not consumed was a huge cedar chest from what had been a second-story bedroom, the outside blackened, but unbroken. Her grandfather had made it, and apparently it was so dense and stubborn, like the man who made it, that it refused to burn.

The four outer walls stood, but it was a hollow house.

Elisile squatted down, picked up a handful of ash, and let the fine dust fall through her fingers.

She did this again.

She kept doing this for a very long time.

Kreilis leaned on the doorframe, looking in on the sad, strange girl. She was playing in the ash, it looked like. Maybe she was looking for something, but it looked like she was just repeating the same motion over and over again. It reminded Kreilis of a few of the senior soldiers, the ones who had fought for too long and seen too much. One would spend hours of the day just… staring into space, whenever he wasn’t fighting. Another would sharpen his sword endlessly, for hours at a time, even though it was already sharp enough to shave with, and a layer of steel filings covered the ground at his feet.

Part of him thought he should just walk away. Leave her to her devices. She wouldn't even notice.

“Hey.” Kreilis spoke. He was unsure what else to say. Sorry for your whole village getting torched and your family burned alive in a mass pyre. Wanna get a few drinks down at the tavern? What are you even supposed to say in a situation like this?

Slowly, the girl stood up, and turned to face him. Her expression revealed nothing, her piercing amber gaze unblinking and unwavering. She stood stock still for what was only a few seconds but seemed far longer, and began slowly walking towards him.

It occurred to Kreilis, for the first time now, that he was still wearing the uniform- quilted armor, dyed ruddy brown with a bright green tree on the chest- of the his army, the same army that had destroyed the town, killed her family, and left her for dead under a mountain of bones and ash.

This was, he thought to himself, a grave tactical error.

Her fist connected with his face just under his cheekbone, sending him sprawling back, his improvised crutches flying away as he tumbled to the ground. His broken leg screamed at him, redoubling in its volume as the girl stomped on it.

Kreilis tried in vain to squirm away on his back, but the girl pinned him to the ground, straddling him, and locking her hands around his neck, squeezing.

Stay Calm Stay Calm Stay Calm Stay Calm-

He tried as hard as he could to harden and still his face. He let his body go limp, and stared into her eyes. Resisting would rile her up more, but ragdolling and looking passive might get her to calm down. Might. Kreilis clung to the idea like it was the only piece of wood in a stormy sea. Fitting, he couldn't breathe, and felt like he was drowning.

The flat expressionlessness of her face shifted, every slightly. A twinge of… curiosity? Concern? It was hard to tell, with all of the spots swimming before Kreiliss’s eyes. Fortunately, her grip loosened just enough to start breathing again, though only with great difficulty.

“Did you do this?” She asked, gesturing with her dead to the ruined town around her. Her voice was cold, flat. Not even cold fury, which he had heard many times over the years. Just… empty.

“C..Compli…plicated” he choked out.

“Did you or didn't you?”
“Breath. Breath. Breath!” he hissed.

Her hands loosed fully, though they still rested on his neck. Ready to continue killing him.

“Fine. Explain.”

“Count Visagriz sent an army into Count Zhaele’s lands. They found this town. So they took what they wanted and torched the rest.”

“Why?”
Kreilis made a gesture approximating a shrug. “Hell if I know!” His voice was rather higher than he wanted it to be, not quite shrill, but creeping closer.

“And you helped?”

“I’m a conscript. I didn’t want to-”

She punched him, this time dead center. Something crunched in his nose. There was a moment between feeling the crunch and feeling the pain, just enough of a delay to prepare himself and keep from screaming aloud.

“Did you kill anyone?”

“No! Half the place was already ash when I arrived-”

She pulled back a fist as if to punch again. He flinched in anticipation. His nose was bleeding, tears flowing from his eyes, and his entire head rang with pain like a bell. He was going to die here.

“I would like to kill you know. Convince me not to.” There was no hint of malice or anger in her voice. It was a statement of fact, followed by a simple command. Nothing more.

His mind spasmed, trying to find something- anything- that he could say.

“Have you ever been more than a day’s travel from here?”

“No.”

“You don't know the outside world. Not like I do. On your own, you won't last a week. You need a guide. You need someone to help you. You need a guide. Someone who knows the land. Someone who knows how to fight.”

Her other hand moved from his throat to his nose, squeezing it. Another detonation of pain behind his eyes.

“I can fight.”

“You're a kid!”

“So are you. And one with a broken leg.”

“I’ve broken bones before. This? Just a minor fracture.”

She continued staring at him for a seeming eternity, her hand held back for another punch. Eventually, she got to her feet and backed away.

“Fine. Now what?”

“South. There is an inn. If we leave now, right now. We should arrive just after nightfall. We mustn't stay out at night any more than is absolutely necessary.”

“Why?”

“Bad Things come out at night. Very Bad Things”

“Fine,” she said in her usual flat tone. She started walking south along the street they were on.

“Um, wait up a second” Kreilis said, crawling over to a crutch and getting up to his feet. “We should get some stuff first. Money. Anything you might be able to use as a weapon. Um… clothes?”

It took a few seconds for the girl to get what he meant, before she nodded and walked- very quickly- back into the house. It was hard to tell through the ash, but it looked like she may have been blushing.

She trudged through the ash to the cedar cabinet, opening it up. She slipped into a set of clothes that looked just slightly too large for her modest frame.

“Um” Kreilis said, “Anything there that I may be able to wear? I probably should be walking around wearing enemy colors, after all.”

She nodded, picking out another set, this time a man’s clothes, and passed them to him. He slipped out into the street so that he could change with a wall between himself and the girl.

The clothes were even larger on him than the girl’s were on her. Whoever they were made for had been easily six feet tall; he had to roll the trousers up quite a ways to keep from walking on them, and the tunic was long enough that he looked like he was wearing a short skirt. He also had to half-dismantle the splint to get it on, and rebuild afterwards. He was still sitting on the ground when the girl came back and stood over him.

She seemed to loom menacingly, but she also seemed to not be trying to do so.

Eventually, he stood up again.

“Find any money?”

She held up a small pouch. “A few rings and a rod. Not much, at least I think so. How much is that?”

He cringed. “Food and lodgings for… two days? Maybe three? I had more than that, but it was with all of my other stuff back in the camp. Presumably the army took it with them. We’ll need more, fast. Hopefully there'll be a job or something posted at the inn.”

The girl nodded. She handed him a knife. It was a small one, for cutting cordage and whittling wood. A tool, not a weapon. She tucked a second knife into her belt. It was a bigger knife by far, a kitchen knife probably.

The girl set off, and Kreilis followed.

“Do you have a name?”

“Elisile”

“Nice name. Mine is Kreilis”