'I'm so fucked.'
Alwyn evaluated his options.
He was dressed lightly, with clothes still soaked in blood. In about an hour he would definitely freeze to death.
He could light a fire, but the night winds would easily put it out, and the rubble offered no shield from the strong currents. The entire site would probably disappear by morning. Second, light could also attract Revenants or people, and both alternatives were equally dangerous for him. Now that he had seen Lynn's memories, he knew what had killed him.
Or better, who. It was not a wild guess anymore, it was really the work of other fellow humans. Of the five Reapers that should have protected him, to be precise.
He didn't know the reason. If this was part of the Church's plan from the start, or if the Reapers he teamed up with were just that greedy. But to kill for a measly two hundred gold coins was unthinkable, at least for Reapers. Their salaries were already stellar.
'This really is suspicious.'
And the circumstances of the incident only raised more questions.
On the afternoon of the sixth day of travel, the Reapers had halted the porters' carriage, stripped them of their heavy clothes, made them line up on their knees with hands tied and the face covered by a cloth, and started beating the crap out of them, while laughing like animals and showering them with mocking slurs.
Only a single Reaper did not participate in the massacre. He remained on the carriage with an aloof expression, as if he was not entirely there. He had been behaving like that since the morning. But feigning ignorance was not a valid excuse, he too was an accomplice. If he truly wanted, he could've stopped everything.
Just thinking about it made his blood boil.
He didn't know what had happened to the other porters, because Lynn had been the first to die.
But of one thing he was sure.
His, was a long and painful death.
And, considering the blood at the scene of the crime, the other porters must have been killed as well, one way or another. It was unlikely that they had managed to escape from their aggressors.
Reapers were strong, unbelievably so. They didn't just reap the soul of the dead, but absorbed them as well. And in doing so, they grew stronger, surpassing the limits of the human body.
The four porters were as good as dead.
However, wouldn't leaving them in the open plain have the same effect? For what reason did they kill them in cold blood with their own hands? If something went wrong, five Revenants would have been born, and the Reapers would have been exposed to unnecessary danger.
Unless that was actually their end goal.
Reaping souls and stealing coins while they were at it.
'Fucking scumbags.'
That was why Alwyn could not light a fire. The Reapers could notice him and come back to finish the job.
So, if he could not warm himself with fire, he at least had to find shelter from the freezing wind.
Now that he knew how bad the currents would be at night, staying at the wreckage site was not a bad decision anymore, because the bloodied debris would instantly fly away, leaving no trail to follow for Revenants and wild beasts.
It was a relatively safe place.
'Let's start digging, then.'
Alwyn put a hand on the ground. The soil was hard and wet.
He tried digging with the bare hand, but to no avail, so he took a small nearby wooden piece and gave it another try.
The task turned out to be too demanding for his frail, crippled body and the available tools. It would take him hours to dig a hole big enough, to fit him and whatever he could salvage from the wrecked carriage.
But what other options did he have?
He had to at least give it a try and also, assuming it would turn out to be a success, plan his next moves.
If he managed to survive the night, he would then need to reach the Whispering Woods in search of anything that could aid him on the journey back to Westguard.
That place was his best bet, but it was also where the chances to run into Revenants grew exponentially higher, so the first thing he had to do was to find himself a weapon.
The second was to harvest wooden planks and rags from the destroyed carriage, as to create isolation from the wet ground and not go into hypothermia. Possibly even some clean clothes.
And the last, was to gather food and water, if there even were any. By then, his legs would have already finished healing, and he could start digging the shelter.
After visiting the dark forest, he would then trace back the carriages' tracks. It would take him triple- no, four times the time it took the convoy on the way out. Lizards were much faster than horses, a simple human could not even compare.
But it was doable, and in doing so, he could take advantage of the previous camps they had built along the way, saving both time and energy.
To traverse the western plains, people commonly used giant lizards to pull carriages. They were faster, had a higher endurance to the cold, and they could burrow at night. Horses instead, would die in a couple days at best.
The carriage as well was built to resist the strong winds of the night, but to not be sorry, people used to shield them with sturdy walls of dirt. That was what he had to search for.
Things were not looking good, not at all, but he now had a plan. A doable one… probably.
'Let's get to work.'