World Breaker: Depths of Despair

Chapter 40: Reunion

I emerge from the forest and walk through the yard and up to my childhood home, the remnants barely recognizable as a home. It was once a lovely home filled with love, where I ran and played in the yard. and my mom tended the garden and did chores around the house. It was a home where my mother would read me stories, feed me delicious meals, and where I first learned of magic from watching her.

Now it is but a burned out shell, devoid of life and love. It is a graveyard, a place where a battle raged and people died. It's where my mother died. Speaking of graveyards, I wonder where all the remains of the people my mother killed are. During my slaughter at the bandit compound, I noticed that the remains of my victims were not absorbed by the planet like monsters are. They remained where they fell. So, I should see at least skeletal remains in and around the house. I doubt the bandits came back to collect their dead. In my time with them, a few would die out on their raids, but they never brought the bodies back.

These thoughts weave around my mind as I walk through the house toward where my room was. Not much time later and I soon find myself standing in the remnants of where my room would have been. This is the location I was where my mother was killed in front of me. A vivid flashback to that time fills my vision and I am forced to relive that moment in time, a moment I won't ever soon forget, in this life and I'm sure even in the next.

The scene before me ends and the house returns to its current ruined state. I clutch my chest as the agony of that loss rips my heart apart once again. I just stand there, staring at the spot where my mother was discarded like a piece of trash. No remains are in here either. I wonder if the planet, Cardial claimed her, perhaps it takes longer for us than it does monsters. Wherever she is, I hope she is somewhere now at peace. I kneel down and touch the area where her body once lay, hoping to feel some remnants of her life force clinging to the spot. All I feel is the cold hard ground, any trace of my mother long since gone over the past years.

I walk among the ruins trying to find trinkets or remnants of my past, reminders of the life that was coldly ripped from me. I can't even find the mana stone from the first Horned Rabbit I killed, that I had kept in my dresser drawer. That dresser long since burned to ash, the stone probably reclaimed by Cardial as it was abandoned and forgotten.

I walk back out to where our backyard garden once was, the land now overgrown and feral. Even the Horned Rabbits are nowhere to be seen, having probably long since left this site of death and destruction. I tap my foot against the rusted-out bucket that still remains, the bucket my mother used to water the garden with, and the very same bucket I used to cover up my crime when I killed that Horned Rabbit all those years ago.

Suddenly I hear a thud over by the forest tree line attracts my attention, an annoyed groan accompanying the thud. I use my shape-shift skill to hide my presence as I turn my attention toward the sound and the person that made it as he stumbled out of the forest and fell into the yard.

It was an older man, disheveled and unkempt, getting up from the floor after stumbling on something on the ground. As he gets back up to his feet, he mutters curses directed at whatever he tripped on. The man looks vaguely familiar, but I don't remember anyone who was as derelict as this, save for the monsters that caused this death and destruction and took me from my home.

As he stumbles closer to the ruins of my home, I can see more of his features. His hair is long, way past his shoulders, the locks matted with knots and tangles, twigs and other vegetation stuck in his hair. The disheveled man stumbles into the ruins, sobbing uncontrollably, muttering to himself, his words unintelligible. He looks and smells not unlike your average homeless person you would see back on Earth.