SFS - Chapter 4 (Patreon)

I prowled low to the ground with my belly brushing against the snow, and pulled to a stop just before entering the valley village proper. I dropped down to maximize my stealth. My fluffy white coat and small frame easily allowed me to blend into the surrounding snowbanks. With my tail wrapped around the satchel, I looked like just another mount of snow.

Calling it a village wasn’t quite right. In the valley of the mountain range, it was a massive expanse of buildings and tiled roofs that covered from the base of one mountain to the other. Closer to the center, taller buildings stuck out of the mass like micro-mountains on their own right. Although the outskirts lacked them, I caught sight of the familiar bronze piping closer to the center. Even through the storm, it gleamed with firelight.

Instead of city walls, poorer farming homes spread out around the outskirts of the village. Tile swapped to thatch, and painted woods changed to simple earthen walls. The density of buildings drastically dropped, and farmland stretched out to the north of the village. It was almost entirely covered in snow, and the crops looked blighted and malignant. A blood-scent wafted off of them.

Movement drew my eyes to farmers out in their snow-covered fields. They shuffled around the snow and left deep paths out to their field. The hunched and bent forms felt off to me. My ear twitched to the side, and I caught the scent of something serpentine just like back in the treatment hall with Graft.

My eyes narrowed on one of the farmers closer to me. He wore a tunic and torn up shorts, leaving his gaunt arms and legs entirely exposed to the merciless cold. His body was misshapen, though. Scales poked out of his skin, and his half-covered eyes looked dull and lifeless. Black blood flowed freely from where the scales stabbed out of his skin and dripped into the snow.

His movements were eerily mechanical. He just ploughed the same spot over and over again with his sickle like a broken doll without reacting to anything. It looked like his arm was broken, but even that didn’t seem to get through to whatever was left of the man.

A shiver went down my spine, and I crouched lower to the ground to avoid detection. It wasn’t just the one farmer either. It was the population of them. Most looked even worse off than the first one. Graft said they weren’t right, yip. I can see what she meant. Record.

Silver flowed out at my call and formed my tome once more. It flipped pages to the map that’d been given to me. I traced the path with a paw. She sharply warned against going into the farmland. Instead, the path flowed through the outskirts of the village where the buildings were denser.

The tome disappeared just as quickly, and I carefully stood back up. Instincts screamed that heading into the village outskirts didn’t feel right. My fur was white, not brown. I’d blend in better out here then there. How much did I really trust Graft? She was my savior, but that didn’t mean I should throw my life away for her.

The more rational side of me, though, whispered that Graft probably knew better. The healer was more familiar with this area, and had deeper insights into what was going on. Although she drew out the map hastily, she obviously put some thought into the route.

I hesitated for a moment and then slunk back toward the mountain to wrap into the village. I had a couple weeks of intelligence at most. Most of that time was in and out while at the treatment clinic too, so it couldn’t even really be counted. My instincts were good, but there was another element that I overlooked. 

My body was still banged-up from the avalanche. I could walk, but that didn’t mean I could run. Out there, in the snow covered fields, there’d be nowhere to hide once I was found. At least in the village, there’d be nooks and crannies for me to get away using. If the farmers were all out in their fields, there’d be less people around too. 

I kept low and close to the mountain. The wind shifted, and my ear twitched toward the village. Something exploded with concussive force. Scattered shouts erupted, quickly followed by sounds of a clash. It looked peaceful from afar, but the village was anything but.

The scent of fire flowed with the wind. It had an acrid tone to it, though, and was almost sultry. It failed to cover up the overwhelming strong serpent-scent and blood-scent that permeated the village. My wariness spiked, and I slowed my approach even further to be careful.

I lined myself up with the shortest path into the village outskirts. I’d still have to cross the field, but it should be fine. The snow and crops gave me ample hiding opportunities, and there was just one blighted farmer tilling the same spot over and over again. 

I got this. I totally got this. If I can't sneak through, then snow-one can. Heh. I carefully slid forward along the snow and slipped into the field. The pungent scent of something foul came from the plants, but my attention was almost entirely locked onto the farmer off to the side.

”Ugghhh—“ A moan of pain came from him, and paused his efforts for a moment. I likewise froze. Did he see me?

The man scratched at his cheek, and tore off a flap of skin. Scales poked through without rhyme or reason in a grotesque display of affliction. The serpent-scent thickened, and the man went back to work.

I let out a breath and edged around him toward a poor farmhouse. The thatch roof was in tatters like it hadn’t been repaired in a long time. The walls sagged, and one of them was half caved in to let freezing winds blow through. Given the state of the farmer, I could put together why that was. 

I moved around the side of the farmhouse and slipped into another field to head south into the outskirts. I followed a wooden irrigation channel that cut through the field like a broken vein. The water inside of the channel was frozen into spiked black ice that reeked of rot.

It dipped down into a small stream that was frozen over. A shovel leaned against one of the banks half buried in snow. It wasn’t like someone had simply walked away in the middle of clearing the stream, though. There was still a scaled hand half attached to the shovel. The rest of the body was nowhere in sight.

The thick fur on my paws gave me more than enough traction and warmth to get across the ice. It caught me off guard earlier because I wasn’t expecting it, but it was a breeze to cut across the frozen irrigation stream here.

Movement on the other side of the bank made me freeze and drop lower into the snow. My tail went still, and perfectly blended in with a nearby snowbank. It wasn’t one of the blighted humans—just diseased crops twitching in the wind.

I picked my way across the field carefully. My path was full of small angles to get to points of cover. I paused at every section to watch for people and crawled around them.

I left a building behind and—

Crunch!

My front paw punched through a crust of ice obnoxiously loud. My puffed up tail flicked forward to cover the satchel in white. I froze just as one of the farmers stopped ploughing. His head slowly rotated toward me with both of his eyes covered in scales. “Arrrghhh!”

Another farmer twitched. She’d been motionless, so I hadn’t seen her before. She stood almost directly in front of me with her head tilted up to the sky. Snowflakes collected in her open mouth, and her mangled face was covered in a layer of the stuff.

A chill went down my spine. If I would’ve kept walking, I would’ve run right into her. Was she… was she even alive, still? How could that be possible? And yet she twitched when the other farmer groaned.

The original farmer groaned and went back to his field. There was already a deep trench from where he’d been going over the same spot over and over again for who knew how long.

The wind died. The entire field fell silent except for the groans of pain and slow scrapes of farmers. I waited until it came back up before carefully extracting my paw. I moved forward much more slowly, and tested the snow depth with each step before committing.

From that moment on, I picked my path much more carefully. I didn’t know that they’d just sit still like that in the fields. My eyes were hyper-attuned to detecting motion, so it slowed me down drastically to sweep the fields for still humans.

Thankfully, the buildings knit closer together, and the poor farmhouses gave way to walled buildings with courtyards. Unfortunately, that also meant the press of humanity was much tighter. Buildings closed in, and what wasn’t snow or ice quickly turned into reeking mud. 

The village itself left me deeply unsettled. The farmhouses were left to rot, but here there were barricades set in the street, wooden carts left behind, and market stalls abandoned to rot. A talisman nailed into a door fluttered with the wind, though the script across it was entirely hidden by blood smeared across the building.

My tail drooped low as the blood-scent grew even more dominant. It merged into the serpent-scent, but they weren’t the only things in this village. Old blood, rot, and something sharp stung my nose. I slunk forward through an alley and paused on a mound of snow next to its mouth.

A scale covered woman wandered around the streets on all fours. Her fingers were torn and mangled with claws sticking out. She had armor on, but it was entirely torn apart by the bulging formations of scales. As if sensing my gaze, a long tongue flicked out to scent the air.

A duo of blighted humans in robes hollowly walked around the grotesque creature without any issue. Scales likewise protruded from them, though their gazes didn’t look as lifeless as the others. It seemed they could recognize each other—

“HSS!” The warped woman pounced on one of the blighted humans with her claws outstretched. She moved freakishly fast, and her limbs angled in distorted directions that sent a chill down my spine.

”Curse your mother!” The robed human dodged backward and flicked out a sword to catch her pounce. The outer robe fell off in the commotion, revealing a set of armor. Several scales that grew from the man likewise fell off. “I told you it wouldn’t work!”

”It worked for the Splicers! The scent gland must not be enough.” The man’s companion shouted and likewise drew a sword from beneath his outer robes. He slashed forward, and the metal sparked off the hard scales of the monstrosity. “Less talking!”

My opportunity came, and I took it. My paws scrambled over the snowy street, and I darted to an alley on the other side. Pain flared across my side, though I ignored it for the moment. I slowed down once I crossed the street, but I didn’t have time to wait for the ache to fade.

I carefully continued down the alley path while the fighting intensified behind me. I don’t like that. Crossing the streets leaves me too exposed.

The alley led out onto another street. Instead of darting across and hoping for the best, I adjusted my approach. I climbed up onto a mound of stacked wood, and slipped through a hole in one of the courtyard walls. From there, I easily climbed up the broken part of the wall and up onto the tiled part. 

I froze for a moment and watched my surroundings to make sure I was safe. From up here, the village looked even worse. The further south I looked, the more desolate the place seemed. Barricades became more and more common, and destruction from battle spread across the place. Not to mention the number of monstrous humans out in the streets sharply spiked. If I went down that way, I’d probably be torn apart before I could see my attacker.

I moved up onto the roof of the building and merged into the snow. The storm intensified, and a rough draft of wind blew snow up onto me as if to obscure me even further. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and a bright flash of lightning struck a building to the south. 

Several shapes shuffled around the street. They were more of the broken, blighted humans that seemed like they were barely still there. Although some of them were poor farmers still, the rough hemp gave way to those in finer robes. Or they had been fine at some point. Now they were filthy with black blood and torn apart by scales just the same.

I eyed a bracketed rope that red lanterns hung from. Could I get across that? Probably, right? I’d just have to hold my balance. The biggest issue was if the noise drew their eyes up. So far, it seemed like the blighted didn’t have great vision, so I shouldn’t have to worry too much about them seeing me otherwise.

My hesitation lasted up until my ear twitched back toward the fields. I heard a rough gale of wind sweep down across the farmland. Chance!

Right as the wind blew down the street and created a bunch of noise, I darted across the roped to a building on the other side of the street. My heart hammered in my chest the entire way, but moving along the rope was actually pretty easy compared to the cliff ledge.

Once I was across, I carefully moved across a courtyard wall and continued traversing to the Ancient Shrine.