Chapter 7: The Slaughterhouse

There are no dreams that night. Lily wakes up to a feeling of a winter morning, the cold permeating her clothes and skin.

Her senses sharpen little by little properly waking up. After sleeping for a while her energy was replenished, yet, she remained tired.

The memories of last night flowed through her. The white light. The images of the brutality. "monster". The blood in her hands was dry yet the memories were still fresh.

She got up from the bed, she looked around, it was a tiny hut. Made out of pieces of black rock stuck together by miracle, from the walls to the ceiling to the bed.

"Well, everything in this place is made from those rocks..." she thinks understanding why such a hut would even exist.

Her sword was left on the floor by the side of the bed. She picks it up and looks at the outside. Her eyes first see only light until she gets used to it.

Finally, she saw a glimpse of her sins. A rotten red mush was left below a tree. The body of the child she had brutalized.

She stops moving for a full second, she is aware of what she has done, but she does not recall such a gruesome end. Her breathing stops as well before she stands up.

"What was done is done," she says while taking a proper hold of her sword. "I have a mission" She walks out of the hut and into the outside, her eyes now used to the light of day. As she looks around she sees the rest of her victims, "I am doing what I must". The child was cut in half, the one executed, and the adult one without a hand.

She begins walking inside the forest, now more careful of her surroundings. Before long she sees another big tree. This time there are three humanoid figures: three adult green demons.

She finally realized that their green skin and their hooked noses looked like those fantasy monsters "Goblins".

She readied her sword as she prepared to slay the goblins. However, a memory hunts her. A child's voice screams "Monster!".

Lily's hands tremble, that memory seemingly ingrained within her mind. She stops in her tracks and decides to hear the goblins, perhaps, "they speak human..." she says unaware that English isn't the only human language.

-terorot- one goblin says while moving a stick and making forms in the snow, its tusks hitting against its chin.

-tskork!- another goblin says as if answering its friend. -bibiorrrrik!- then screams an older-looking goblin, its greyish green differentiating from the two equally tall yet brighter greened ones.

Lily breathed calmly. It seemed that last night was some illusion. These creatures were, in fact, just animals, unable to speak.

She held her sword and quickly jumped to attack them. Her swing was stronger and faster than the night before, the one with the stick was the first, it tried blocking her sword with that thin, black stick yet it meant little as Lily slayed the green demon.

The other two looked at her, their noses trembling, they were far too surprised to move. Lily took advantage of this and pierced through the other young-looking one.

Finally, the last survivor, the old goblin had a defeated look on its face as it kneeled touching the head of its dead family member. Lily did her best to ignore it, simply considering acting, "Beasts wait for weaknesses to be shown" That was a line from those hunting documentaries she had seen in the past.

She was not going to be tricked. "These beasts cared not for anyone, it is an act, and they want me to lower my guard" Those sentences repeated within her head as she raised her sword and executed the kneeling old goblin.

Their blood stank the surroundings, even the stone huts seemed to be stained by her brutality. She did her best to remain calm, she was there for a holy mission.

Her eyes stared at the corpses, she stayed unmoving, like the stone around her, her mind blank. The blood from those monsters flowed and tainted the snow around them and even formed a small pool of blood, reflecting the red sky and the naked branches of the stone forest.

She only comes back to movement once she is reminded by the cold wind that she is still alive.

She begins, once again walking around the forest, killing off different goblins, their sins seemingly being sumarized as "being in front of her", her sword and body becoming more agile and strong as she murders them. Perhaps a reward from the god, to remind her she is going the right way.

Different goblins appear, they only have those thin, rock sticks, perhaps branches from the trees, yet they are powerless against her sword and strength.

Lily felt drunk by the blood, things turning into a blur as the world around her turned red.

Within a few hours, before Lily was fully aware, the entire forest was covered in a rotten stank, very much like walking in a slaughterhouse the warm stone forest was stained red, its rocky trees being the last thing in that place with a shining green.

Lily was at the centre, bloody sword in hand, her red eyes shined in the increasingly darker night, her entire day simply consisted of hunting and now night-time was approaching. The blood on her shirt, boots, and hood was enough to consider the white being the stain on the red fur.

Anyone who would have seen it, would have defined her as a demon red from head to toes, even its eyes glowing with bloodlust.

She was standing right next to the body of her last victim, a tiny goblin, a child that began throwing snow at her as she killed its parents. Lily cut it down heartlessly, there was no other goblin with a white light power, so no goblins spoke her language and so she wasn'tinterrupted from her task.

As she is lost in her thoughts, repeating her mantra "They are beasts, monsters, demons. I'm doing my job, I'm killing these demons, it's self defence, he attacked me first" while lying to herself she is attacked by a flying knife. She is too slow to realize it and gets stabbed in her shoulder.

-aghhh- Lily screams in pain as for the first time her blood is forced to mix with the outside of hell.

Yet, Lily endures, her eyes instinctively hunting for the one responsible for such an attack, she looks around only to have another flying knife directed towards her head, she barely gets to avoid it as it slices a bit of her face.

-Show yourself!- she screams at the darkness, the only light being the green magical glow of the trees.

Suddenly as she screams so, a sword appears behind her, its blade a few centimetres of distance from her neck, by mere instinct Lily knew to drop her sword, she had no way of escaping someone with clear experience in hunting.

-dorock torteck- it said as it quickly placed something on her wrists. She was unable to understand what it was saying, yet she knew she was in trouble.

Finally, someone walked from the shadows, and what looked like a human woman appeared in front of Lily, yet this woman had her skin and eyes tainted red. A red similar to the blood covering Lily's clothing.

The woman seemed to be wearing a woolly outfit, around her sides there seemed to be a dozen knifes all kept close to her waist.

The red woman then pulls the knife from Lily's shoulder and says -porporedddo!- smiling as if claiming a prize. "Perhaps the creature is celebrating her capture" though Lily who had now become capable of calling even the humanoid demons creatures.

The one holding the sword on her neck removed it from its place and walked in front of Lily, she couldn't move, perhaps whatever was placed on her wrist stopped her from doing so.

Yet, her line of thought is interrupted by the humanoid creature that is holding the sword, it is covered in metal armour, like a knight from a medieval story.

Lily was having a huge clash, considering that the goblins from before did not wear much of anything, at least not as far as she remembered.

She couldn't see the knight's skin or body properly but she could tell its silhouette was human.

However, as she tries to move and escape she starts feeling dizzy, her world spinning in circles violently, until everything turns back.