Scriven
Slayer of incompetent and disappointing minions
Part One: The Beginning
The whole city stank of rotting bodies. They littered the streets like so many leaves, a feast for the birds who flocked en masse to gobble up the sudden excess of carrion. A fat vulture was nibbling daintily at a thin man’s swollen lips, flapping its wings at any smaller birds who dared approach his prize. The man’s eyes were already gone, pecked out and devoured. It was a macabre scene, thought Quil, but she had already become accustomed to the death around her. She had walked the roads for two days and not found another living soul. Her pockets were filled to bursting with the silver and gold she had looted from corpses before she realized there was no point. There was no one left to buy and sell anymore; only her. Only Quil Purcell, a woman lost in a sea of the dead.
Yet she still couldn’t bring herself to empty her pockets, even though they were so heavy that they weighed her dress down and made her hem drag in the dust. She had found no survivors, but perhaps outside the walls of the city life still flourished. She planned to walk to the gates, find a horse or two, and travel as far as she had to in order to find another living soul. When she did she was going to be rich in gold, silver, and jewels. But first, she thought, turning toward the castle, she had to procure some jewels.
The sun was falling fast in the sky and Quil had no choice but to stop and find a place to rest for the night. For all that she kept a brave face during the day, being alone in a city full of corpses was too unnerving for her in the darkness. Night brought the terror of ten thousand dead bodies, ten thousand corpses rotting and stinking and glaring at her, the only survivor. They hated her, she felt. The dead were jealous of her life and wanted her to join them. As soon as the sun crept low in the sky, she liked to find an empty home, lock all the doors, and pretend she wasn’t the only survivor of the sudden disaster that had struck everyone else. It had happened so quickly, reflected Quil as she pulled open the door of a small but neat home with a thatch roof. It had taken only days for everyone to die and leave her all alone.
Her nose scrunched up in sudden revulsion. The fragrant rot of something dead and putrid drifted toward her. Tentatively she crept forward, a hand over her mouth and nose to block the odor. The main room of the home was clear, but there was a door at the back. Her hands took hold of the cold, iron handle and pulled the door open.
The sight before her made her heave, and soon the bread and sausage she had eaten at midday was splattered across the floor. Hanging off the bed was a young woman, or what had once been a young woman. Some kind of animal had gotten hold of her and pulled her body half out of her bed, then had eaten most of her face and ripped her bowels from her stomach.
Weak and nauseous, Quil crossed the room, stepping over the pool of vomit she had made to grasp the dead, half-eaten woman under the shoulders. She heaved again, but her stomach was empty now and nothing more came up her throat. With a strong tug she pulled the woman out of the bed and began dragging her out of the room. Quil held her breath and didn’t release it till she’d pushed the body out the front door onto the street and closed it firmly behind her. The woman sucked in a breath, chest heaving with breathlessness and fright, her hand over her pounding heart. Touching the bodies was the worst part about being surrounded by them. The first day hadn’t been so terrible, even when it had been shocking and fresh. At least the day they died the bodies weren’t ripe. Now they were beginning to rot and decay, and half of them had been picked at by some kind of animal.
There was a deep copper washing basin in the bedroom, but she had to brave hopping over the woman she had moved to go back and forth to the well to fill it. She removed her soiled dress and sweat-stained chemise, stepping naked into the cold water. It chilled her tanned, freckled skin, making goosebumps rise on her flesh and the hairs on her arms stand up. The cold was a small price to pay to be clean, she decided, lowering her whole body into the basin. She hadn’t bathed in days, and the grime felt thick on her skin. Moving the woman’s half-eaten corpse had made her feel sick; she hoped bathing would rid her of that. Quil dunked her head under the water and scrubbed soap into her scalp, pulling the suds through her thick, unruly curls. She rubbed soap into her hands, which were perpetually stained an ill shade of gray-purple from dying wool till just past her wrists, but it made no real difference on the stains that had accumulated from a lifetime of work. She scrubbed till her skin was pink and sore, then poured water over her head till her hair was free of soap.
Stepping out of the copper basin, Quil dripped onto the uneven stone floor, naked and shivering. Her clothes were in a heap and she picked them up, bringing them to her nose. They smelled like rotting dead, just like the rest of the city. They slipped from her fingers, a puddle of rough brown cloth she had forgotten. With no thought of respect for the dead woman she had hoisted out of her own home, Quil rummaged through the chest at the foot of the bed. Inside were blankets, men’s clothing, and at the very bottom a pale green dress and clean white chemise. It was simple of cut and rough of cloth, but it was a sight better than anything she owned and it smelled clean.
With the dead woman’s comb, Quil worked the tangles from her thick, light brown curls, which liked to stand around up around her head in a messy halo when dry. She braided it into a plait that hung over her shoulder to her waist and tied it with a strip of cloth torn from her soiled dress. She slipped the chemise over her head and draped the clean dress over the top of the chest to wear the next day, then pulled the blanket from the bed and curled up on the floor. The bed, though it had a good, thick straw mattress, was covered in congealed blood and she wouldn’t go near it.
The room grew dark as the sun disappeared behind the buildings that crowded the city. Quil curled up tightly in her blanket, knees pulled to her chest. She fell asleep in the fetal position, her tan, freckled arms wrapped around her legs. When the sun came up she would go to the castle and steal whatever valuables she could carry, then get out the city of the dead.
Last edited by a moderator: