Beasts, Not Men [3]

Liam and Luna continued their journey together. Liam observed many fascinating species, as well as new techniques to survive in a jungle. The world seemed slightly more humid than he remembered, and the most likely cause was the jungles themselves as they trapped the heat of the sun.

Insects, beasts, plants, even recurrent natural disasters such as small floods and landslides plagued Liam and Luna as they traveled. At first, Liam thought they were cursed in their travels, why was everything getting in their way? But after discussing with Luna he learned that what they had been through was actually relatively mild.

'Just how much suffering did she go through to meet me?' Liam found himself thinking yet once again. After three weeks as travel companions, Liam had a foundational trust in Luna. She was smart, albeit slightly lacking in worldly experience. She was dedicated and honest, not to mention her worst fault was his favorite, she was an absolutely horrendous liar.

On several occasions she had grown fidgety while they traveled. She had then insisted that she scout ahead and Liam prepare for danger. At first he suspected some form of ambush that she had picked up, but eventually he determined what was going on. Apparently, even this far in the future and disconnected from society etiquette, it wasn't acceptable for a man to know that a woman was going to the restroom.

Eventually the mountains leveled out into rolling hills. The autumn climate tempered, and the temperatures rose to more comfortable levels. Only in the South would Autumn and Spring so closely mirror each other, with the added benefit that Autumn and Spring would both eat into the time for winter to rear its ugly head.

Liam breathed a full breath into his lungs and exhaled. It was the taste of home. No matter how much time had passed, his body seemed to recognize his roots and he felt a level of comfort he hadn't felt in quite some time.

As the rolling foothills passed by, Liam and Luna would occasionally pass through massive plains, flattened untold years ago, that he recognized. 'This would be Raleigh, we passed through Star City, Durham, and are now moving toward Charlotte… There's nothing left…'

Feeling melancholy and joyous was a difficult dichotomy inside a person, but Liam held it all in. He spoke tersely with Luna as they traveled. His own reminiscence would require too much explaining to her, and would probably only make her more confused about the world at hand. He needed her guidance and couldn't afford to distract her with his ramblings of an old man.

<At least you admit it old man. Is this North Carolina?>

'I think so. We aren't far from Home. I'm a little nervous to see it, but excited at the same time.'

<For sure, if I were you, I'd temper my expectations. After all, you are older than even the ruins they are discovering. Every tree and stream is younger than you. Ah, calm down! You're at 74% Neural Stability, no need to become unstable because of my words!>

'Look Noona. I'm not shook up by you, we've come to a…village. Can you smell it?'

<Initial scans show the village to be roughly 2.7 miles away. I am detecting trace amounts of Hemoglobin in the air. Blood? You can smell blood from this far?>

'…Yes…and it's fresh.'

Luna was frustrated. She didn't expect Liam to become so taciturn as they traveled, but it seemed as if the more they moved the quieter he got. Luna had just steeled herself to ask Liam what was wrong when she felt a sudden wave of bloodlust radiating off of him.

Admirably, when Luna felt Liam's bloodlust, rather than being immediately suspicious of him, she put her back to his and looked into the forest, waiting for an enemy attack. When nothing happened after several seconds, Luna asked, "Liam, what happened? Why are you suddenly so on guard?"

"Town ahead. Someone died. Smells like it happened within the last couple hours. Stay sharp. Move out to five o' clock and wait until you see my signal before you act." Liam's voice became cold and very, very quiet.

"Five o' clock? What's that?" Luna's innocent question caused Liam to freeze before he took a deep breath. After explaining the positions of the clock hand tersely, he sent her slightly behind him to the right.

Up ahead, Liam spotted the first fortifications he had seen in over ten thousand years. It was a shabby wall made of wooden tree trunks lashed together and buried in the ground. Even so, the mild 'wall' had a series of serious fortifications in front of it, spiked barricades and pits littered the ground in front of the broken gates.

Yes, broken gates. There was a number of corpses in the pits, riddled with sharpened pikes that had been buried tip up in the pits, and there were even corpses speared on the barricades as if they had been pressed upon them by the greater numbers behind them.

The corpses were uniform in appearance, each one was of a smaller humanoid with a segmented tail standing no more than four feet in height. The long pronounced snouts and fur lined bodies identified them…they were what Luna described as the 'Shu' race. Rat men.

Prolific, of moderate strength, and dangerous in numbers. That was the summary Liam gathered from Luna about the Shu race. He had noted her physical shuddering while describing them, but he hadn't put two and two together until now.

As they slowly walked into the town on guard, the carnage in front of them unfolded. There were many corpses of rat men, and scattered among them were the corpses of a furred Fera that Liam had not seen before. They looked like cats with spotted fur, but were only slightly larger than the rat men.

Liam's cold gaze swept across the village as he saw the remnants of unspeakable acts committed. Women profaned brutally with their clothes torn as savagely as their flesh, men impaled on spikes with their limbs missing.

Above all, there was a larger corpse of a cat man that was surrounded by over a dozen corpses of beast men, his body mangled with hundreds of wounds. Clearly that had been the tribal leader who fought until his last breath.

"What race was this Luna?" Liam spoke tersely. His guard was fully up and nothing escaped his eyes.

"…These are an offshoot of the Mao tribe, known as the Shanmao…they are a smaller sub-race and are relatively peaceful. They are completely friendly to most tribes. What would drive the Shu tribesmen to commit such atrocities?" Luna's eyes shook with sadness at the carnage in front of her.

<Luna, they were driven by the same thing that drives any 'intelligent' species. Selfishness. They coveted what others had and used their strength to take it. It is a tale older than time. They are beasts. Not men.> Noona's voice sounded morose, something Liam had never heard before.