Sueño: Stay safe ~ Past

When Raz, Herm and Ases arrived at the village in the beginning, they tried to be inconspicuous, but it was a lost cause from the start. The boar mask is too telling for a sign, even when he is not using it. Even covered by an enormous bag and carried like a backpack, the giant tusks reveal what they tried to hide.

And since the fateful day he killed it, that mask signaled the presence of the great keres. Once a race of spirits who did the bidding of Mors but became extinct after the last God’s conflict, a single person was now given the honor of carrying the mantle of their kind. He was the hero blessed by death, but to the world, he was nothing but a grim reaper.

His task was not to kill nor take the souls of the common people, but the Goddess of death brought with herself a heavy stigma that he inherited with his mantle. People were naturally wary of him, but at the same time, the implication his power had was eerie enough to prevent them from actually doing anything to him.

They arrived and settled in an abandoned cottage, just some minutes away from the actual village. Nobody dared to ask them for anything, after all, if they came with the reaper, then the stigma applied for them too.

“Herm, take care and be very careful. If there’s any sign of anything going wrong, leave the village and we will meet again in Medio.”

“You already told me that at least ten times, if you keep repeating it I’ll start believing you don’t actually trust me with this.”

“You are the only person I would trust with this, brother.”

Ases gave Herm a hug, before going back to his wife, Raz. She was resting from the long trip which had been particularly heavy for her. After all, a heavily pregnant woman should not be doing that kind of journey.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can, should take a week at most.” said Ases, kneeling and taking her hand.

“I know, you also told me that… You are the one that should take care.”

“I will, but you don’t really need to worry about me.”

“I always will.”

Their goodbye extended for minutes, but eventually he had to separate from her. He had made a point of hiding his wife from the Gods and he would keep that to the end. The fact that there was no other stopping place for the rest of the path was also a deterrent, but the most important reason to separate was the fact that he was going to get close to the new shoreline.

They had just escaped from Perdida, a walled city that was considerably far from the water, but got attacked by the beasts nonetheless. Ases and Herm fought with the defenses of the city but it was a lost cause and barely managed to escape themselves from the ensuing chaos once the army fell. They had learned their lesson, once the beasts arrive, the only option is to escape and keep moving.

At the very least, even if it was small, the village they were in was even farther from the new shoreline than Perdida once was. If that didn’t give them some semblance of safety, then probably nothing would.

The first couple of days went on without any hitch. At most, a couple of kids did try to see the people that had just arrived, but didn’t dare to approach in case the reaper came back.

Even from before they had arrived, the village was in a state of unrest. Until then, they had managed to avoid trouble due to how remote they were and their privileged positions in the mountains. It could have been fine for a while, but they estimated it would be a month at most before the water reached them. With so little remaining time, they had to made a decision

But, how can someone abandon their home, just like that?

The discussion couldn’t be heard, but from their cottage she could see how everyday the people would reunite in the plaza, discuss for several hours and then go back home. She couldn’t quite distinguish the people, but the movement spoke for itself. The situation had been similar in every other place they had gone to, and it probably would be for the remaining months before everything was swallowed by the waters.

The need to move was evident and when the water came they wouldn’t have a choice, but seeing that nobody left the village, Raz guessed that they couldn’t reach any agreement. Simply, people wanted to stay in their homes all they could, and those who did not, didn’t dare to do the trip by themselves.

For her, on the other hand, the path to follow was obvious, they should have abandoned the village weeks ago, it was never up to discussion.

“You can’t be serious. you are supposed to rest, you have to take care of yourself.” responded Herm, when she asked to accompany him for provisions into the village

It was true that it was painful to do a long walk, but she didn’t dare to tell Herm the reason she wanted to go to the village. If people were rational enough, maybe she could convince them to leave if she told them about what happened in Perdida.

“All I want is to have some fresh air, do you really want me to stay in the cottage the entire day? It is humid and is starting to stink.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie, she was sick of staying there. Walking wasn’t better either, but at the time it seemed preferable than just staying. Fortunately, Herm seemed to agree with the notion of how nasty their lodgings were.

The village must have had a couple hundred people at most. They looked at them with suspicion, but didn’t dare to cross a word. Some kids seemed to be doing dares to decide who would go and talk with them, but they just ignored them.

The plaza was dirty, full of empty liquor bottles, with a couple of drunkards sprawled around to accompany them. Ever since the beasts appeared, the land’s reserves of alcohol had started depleting at a record speed.

Apart from that, no one else was wandering the streets. Even, she noticed that all the windows were closed and there wasn’t any bustling around. If she hadn’t heard their discussion the day before, she may have thought they had already left. But what personally had unnerved her the most was the fact that she hadn’t seen a single vagrant since they arrived.

“Herm, I think we gotta go.”

“What happened? Do we need to come back to the cottage?” Said Herm, looking at her with worry.

“No, that’s not the problem. It’s the lack of people here.”

“Well, yeah, of course. They all went back to their homes.” He answered, confused by her response.

But there’s something he knew from experience, from all the time he had known her for. When she has an intuition, you must listen to it. That ability to notice when something was amiss had saved him more than a couple of times now.

“Yes, but there should be a lot more people around. This village is remote, but there were a lot of other villages consumed by the stream down the mountain. This place should be full of refugees, but we haven’t seen a single one of them.”

He stopped to think for a moment. He had been watching the village since they arrived and there didn’t seem to be any people from outside the village in it.

“And It would be unlikely for all of them to have moved up already, considering that this place is still safe from the water.” He concluded her thoughts, understanding where her intuition was going.

“To be honest, I hadn’t noticed it when we arrived, but isn’t it strange that the cottage was empty to begin with?. There are thousands of people everywhere who don’t have a roof now, but there just happens to be an empty house here?”

“If they have been doing something to the outsiders, then probably the only reason they have not done anything to us is because we arrived with Ases. We will part to Medio in a couple of hours, we better not risk it”

They were already turning back where they came from, trusting the bad feeling they had. But before they could even start stepping away, they realized that whatever was happening there was the least of their problems.

After all, from one of the narrow alleys further down the path, a three meter being started walking into the plaza. It had a blue attire, long arms that almost could reach the ground and what seemed to be two small heads coming out from a single neck. But it wouldn’t take long for them to realize that they were not heads, but two enormous crab-like eyes, looking at them directly.