Aftermath

Haruki and Lillianna rode on their Rindwyr to the edge of a nearby forest, where they hid throughout the night. There they would wait until the morning, so they could make sure the coast was clear before returning.

“Haruki, you must not have slept at all before coming here, right? Why don’t you get some rest? I can keep watch,” Lillianna offered.

“Thanks, but I think that even if I tried to sleep right now I wouldn’t be able to. Besides, staying awake and keeping watch over you will help keep my mind at ease,” he responded.

“Fine then.” The tone of her voice indicated that she was hoping Haruki would be willing to take it easy.

As they sat there on the ground beside the Rindwyr, Lillianna leaned up against Haruki.

“It’s kind of chilly out tonight,” Lillianna said.

“Y-yeah.” Haruki’s adrenaline finally began to relax, and he became flustered by the situation.

The warmth of their two bodies and the Rindwyr behind them combined, bringing a sense of comfort despite the situation.

“Haruki, do you think uncle and everyone are going to be alright?” Lillianna asked him.

“I think things are going to be fine,” Haruki lied. He was just as uncertain as her, but he wanted her to remain positive. “We should trust Johannes; if anybody knows what to do, it’s him.”

“I guess you’re right,” she replied.

As they sat there in the quiet of the night, Haruki’s mind began to stray.

“I wonder why that army is marching in the middle of the night through their own lands. They were moving so quickly too, it almost seemed magical,” Haruki pondered, trying to keep a conversation going.

“I’ve heard the capital can use its magicians to temporarily make their soldiers able to go several weeks without needing to stop or sleep. However, it’s supposed to be very harsh on their bodies.”

“Hmm… that’s interesting,” he said.

His mind was beginning to drift off, he was thoroughly exhausted. He had worked all day and ran frantically all night. Even if he didn’t want to, his body was forcefully trying to use this moment to get some rest.

The next thing he knew, he was waking up. It was now morning.

Lillianna was still sleeping beside him, her head resting on his shoulder.

“Lillianna…” he whispered, gently rocking her to wake her up.

“Huh… yeah?” she startled awake.

“It’s morning, let’s go check to see if everything’s all clear.”

She took a deep yawn. “Alright, let’s go.”

They spied on the farms for a while from the edge of the tree line, carefully making certain the town was completely free from any of the invaders who were there last night.

It seemed they had already moved on.

The two of them headed back to the village with their Rindwyr in tow. Once they got close enough to the farmhouse they could tell that the coast was clear, so they hurried back to the home.

They placed the beast back in the barn, where the four other Rindwyr they once had were now missing. On any other day this would be a devastating loss, but at the moment more pressing matters concerned them.

They ran into the farmhouse.

“Johannes!” Haruki yelled.

“Uncle! Are you in here?” Lillianna shouted.

They didn’t hear any response. They searched inside the home but couldn’t find any sign of his presence, so they began searching around outside, calling out for him.

“I’m over here.” They heard a voice off in the distance.

Beside a tree they spotted a man lying on the ground.

“It’s Johannes!” Haruki exclaimed. The two of them rushed over to his side.

Johannes was sitting against a pear tree. He had removed his shirt and wrapped it around his shoulder, but it was soaked through with blood.

“Uncle, are you alright?” Lillianna questioned, her voice very concerned.

“Yeah… this ain’t much, I’ll be fine. I’m just a bit too light-headed to get up is all,” Johannes replied, playing his injury off as if it were something trivial.

Haruki immediately removed Johannes’ bloody shirt and took off his own, pressing it against Johannes’ wound.

“What happened to you, Johannes?” Haruki asked.

“I was able to negotiate with them a bit, but I must’ve accidentally ticked off one of those thugs somehow, ’cause all the sudden one of them stabbed me right in the shoulder. It’s nothin’ too bad though, don’t you worry.”

“Don’t say that, uncle. Of course we’d be worried!” Lillianna said.

As soon as Haruki had patted up most of the blood that had leaked through, he removed his shirt and Lillianna placed her hands against Johannes’ wound. An aura began to glow around her hands as she attempted to heal his wound, to the best of her ability.

She began to tear up, overwhelmed by the sight of her uncle with such a deep injury.

“It’s alright, Lillianna. Just remain calm and focus on healing him. I don’t think his injury is life-threatening,” Haruki assured her.

Her face became resolute once again upon hearing Haruki’s words.

“Haruki, go and fetch some water. He needs to immediately replenish the liquids he’s lost,” Lillianna ordered.

Haruki ran off and quickly did as he was told, bringing back a pail of water from the well.

As Lillianna continued her healing, Haruki tilted the pail up into Johannes’ mouth, allowing him to slowly sip at the water.

After a while Lillianna finished up her healing, doing as much as she was capable of to undo the damage to her uncle’s shoulder.

“I’ve done all I can with my magic, we’ll have to let nature deal with the rest of the healing,” she explained. “I was able to seal the wound, but I’m afraid the insides are still damaged. It seems part of his shoulder bone is broken, and the muscles are torn through.”

Haruki wrapped his arm around Johannes’ uninjured shoulder, helping him stand up, and together they guided him back into the house. Once inside, they gently laid him down on his bed.

The priority for Johannes would be to rest and keep his arm immobile, so that it could slowly heal. To help with this, Lillianna fashioned a sling out of some old linen fabric, which would keep his arm and shoulder set in place.

They reasoned it would probably be best to keep his shoulder like this through the winter, to let it heal as much as possible and hopefully regain its full functioning. Johannes immediately protested this prognosis, as he wanted to continue to help out with things, but Lillianna was able to convince him that he must rest for a while.

However, the most troubling reality wasn’t Johannes’ injury. The army had also taken all of their livestock and all of the grain they had stored up from the harvest.

All that they had left was the single Rindwyr Haruki and Lillianna had taken with them the other night. Everything they’d done earlier that fall was all for nothing.

Later that day, Haruki went around and surveyed the rest of the village. Luckily no homes had been burned down and there were only a couple other people severely injured like Johannes, but as for the food situation everyone else was just as badly off as them.

All the farms had lost everything, all the livestock and every bit of grain had been pillaged, leaving almost nothing behind for the community to survive on during the upcoming winter.

A couple families were already packing up and heading off to larger nearby towns, hoping to find work to keep them fed until they can return next spring to start over again. People were rapidly losing faith in their ability to continue living here.

Who would have thought that in a world full of monsters, our biggest threat would be other humans? Haruki thought to himself.

The only other exception was Rudolph’s family, as Rudolph heard Haruki’s shouting last night and had quickly released his family’s animals out into the fields, where a few of them managed to avoid being taken.

Everyone was worried about where their next meal would come from. Johannes’ and Rudolph’s families offered to share the extra meat from the livestock they managed to save with the other villagers, but even if they butchered every single one there probably wouldn’t be enough to feed everyone for the whole winter.

Haruki thought about what he should do.

The situation didn’t look good at the farm I was working at. Besides, if there’s any way I can help out around here, that would be far more important to me. I can’t just leave again after what happened, but I also don’t want to become just an extra mouth to feed.

The people of their village were in a dire predicament, and it was unclear if there was anything Haruki could do to help.

Would leaving again really be the best thing I could do for them?