The Slayer

Chapter 5 - this couldn't be any worse ;-;

Chapter Five

This Couldn't be Any Worse

'This couldn't be any worse!'

Waltz threw his head back, groaning and baring his teeth as he gripped his hair.

'Oh come on' Rude said beside him. 'It's not that bad.'

'What?!' Waltz squeaked. 'Look at this place!'

Leroy strode past him in brooding silence, gazing about him at the carnage. The simple village they had come to, the houses made of wooden walls and thatched roofs, with wooden fences that stood in the gardens to hold the animals, was almost completely destroyed in parts. It looked like a great beast had crashed into several of the buildings, tearing them apart as if they were made from only paper. Several animals wandered about in confusion, sheep that had once been penned now roamed free, bleating and milling around. Amongst the broken houses, were injured people being care for by other, bearing various different wounds, and here and there, bodies were covered with white cloths.

'What happened here?' Leroy asked of an old man, sitting on the steps before one of the broken homes, his own home by the look of it.

'Are you the heroes who have come to save us?' the old man asked.

'We have taken the job' Leroy replied to the man flatly. 'We are here to slay the beast.'

'Oh' the old man sighed. 'Thank god. You have to kill it. It is an evil creature.'

'Where is the village leader?' Leroy asked him.

'She's over there' the old man replied, pointing in one direction.

Leroy nodded to him once, before marching away. The other members of the guild trailing after him.

They found the village leader to be a young woman in her late teens, pretty with scruffy blond hair and dishevelled clothes. She was speaking to several people, dishing out orders and pointing from here to there. Behind her, just outside the village was a small fire, on which a small number of bodies were being burned. Holy figures dressed in modest clothes surrounded the pyre, heads bowed as they chanted their prayers.

'Thank god we've only lost as few as we have' the village leader was saying to another man. 'The size of that beast could have made this so much worse.'

'Excuse me' Leroy spoke loudly to her.

She turned to him.

'Are you the village leader?'

She pursed her lips. 'My father and grandfather have died. I am young, but this is my job now.' She paused, considering the group. 'Are you the ones who have taken the job we advertised?'

'Yes' Leroy grumbled back.

Behind him, Waltz leant out from the group to get a better look at her.

'It has been a sad day for all of us. The beast kept coming back. The people are afraid to leave their homes now. Your very presence here brings comfort to the folk.'

As she spoke, young children began to gather around the members of the guild, gazing up at them in wide-eyed wonder. Waltz gazed back, grinning widely. He remembered, what felt like a lifetime ago, being young and full of dreams, just like these children. He had dreamed of being a powerful mage, to be awed and respected and just a little feared.

He was still pursuing that dream...

'I'm just grateful' the young village leader was saying. 'If it was a fire-breathing creature...well...out little wooden village would have been completely destroyed.'