CHAPTER 6

The changing colour of the skin, first from pale to bluish and then immediately to red, was the apogee of the transformation and the final touch, in which the rest resembled an explosion of the body from within, a bright and scarlet fountain in all directions of the content of the stranger's physique on the young man and the second stranger.

The latter, though he reacted much sooner than Isaia, but instead of confronting the later or helping his companion, the frightened man began to back away slowly, muttering something inarticulate and incomprehensible to himself.

The evening sky, a young man appearing in strange clothes and barefoot, were not the most pleasing hints to the imagination.

The two guards of Torrhen's Square, from which the two strangers were from, who patrolled their lord's domain, not far from the Tolharts' ancestral home, did not like the state of affairs from the start.

Initially their thoughts had drifted towards the stranger's being someone of nobility or mentally unstable, so there were no ideas in the back of their minds of using weapons or showing aggression from the start. If the case had been one of the former, then the explanation would have been that the poor man had been robbed and had escaped barefoot from the robbers.

The latter case on the other hand is rather common, considering the occasional lost souls in the North who have lost their common sense, and who often go out in light clothes and without shoes to walk in the cool expanse of the wilderness.

The cold and harsh climate is the cause of languid and depressive thoughts, especially of the kind that often become destructive, which is characteristic of the local winter that the Starks are so fond for reminding people of.

Many were also attracted to the path of alcohol, which hand in hand with depressive thoughts has an even more degrading effect on the minds of the inhabitants of the local revenge.

The maester didn't mention anything about winter, which meant that it would be possible to do without it for a few more years. And how else to be, it will not ask, instead, as an uninvited guest itself will appear on the doorstep. At least, scientific minds six months or even earlier, before the unwanted event, can distinguish the signs and calls of nature, warning the inhabitants of the surrounding areas about the need to make preparations for the disastrous season for both common people and the nobility.

 As a result of all this, the second guard, having taken a few steps backwards during the metamorphosis of his colleague, turned and ran as soon as the body of the latter was torn.

The relationship between the two lawmen could not be called a close acquaintance, and there are a dozen different frightening stories in the North, so that there was no thought of staying to help or to clarify anything.

Signs of panic, accompanied by screams of horror at what he'd seen, with a good amount of the first guard's scraps on himself were the only things that could be observed from the sidelines. Unlike Isaia, he was closer to the poor guy, namely on the side, and took on more of his companion's remains before turning and running. As he ran, he repeatedly stumbled and hurt himself on the ground, but all was done with one thought - to get away from the unfortunate stranger into the arms of safety in spite of everything.

All this time our young acquaintance was in prostration, watching as if in slow-motion as the whole torture process of victim was taking place, feeling somewhere in himself bits of horror of what had happened.

While the second stranger was busy with his escape, other changes were happening to Isaia, which is why he was not entirely concerned with the fate of the individuals nearby. He felt some weakness in his body that he had never encountered before.

Fear, of course, gripped the young man even more powerfully than slight dizziness and some exhaustion, seeing the changes and the peak stage in the form of blood and particles of the interlocutor's body on his own clothes.

Only the sight of the second stranger stumbling and running while screaming all along brought Isaia back to his senses, forcing him to come to his senses that a situation that can only be described in a mild way as not entirely friendly could happen to him too, so he turned around and ran back to where he was heading from all this time. This direction included precisely the very forest from where he began his ascent to the basics of civilization.

The fear of being involved in a murder story did not seem something attractive and desirable. Moreover, the story was not a simple one, but rather a piquant one, which could be considered an article with special cruelty, because there were elements of abuse, if you look at the incident from a different point of view.

From all this said comes a very appropriate desire to be away from these places, and preferably faster so that even a forest of not the most pleasant forms and attractive characteristics seemed a better alternative.

Much to the regret of Isaia, his health did not allow him to leave in the same radiant state of health as he had when he arrived at the scene of the unfortunate events. Slight dizziness and weakness throughout the body forced him to begin to think and understand the reasons for what was happening.

If the call had been a slight whisper of discomfort before, it had turned into a small shouting cry as he felt tired and hungry. Isaia didn't care for the reasons and the connection between the body needing nourishment and hunger with the increase in the call, though it was exhausting. The sensations of sucking and rumbling in the stomach area, typical for a hungry person, made it possible to understand that this was precisely the desire to eat.

Isaia reached the forest in an insensible form, not noticing neither the passage of time nor the distance. Of course, it was doubtful that he had returned to the exact area from which he began his journey, but initially there was no critical pickiness in this regard, the main thing was to stay away from the scene of the murder and all kinds of additional witnesses.

A state of absolute exhaustion overshadowed the fear. If he had been in good health, he would have preferred not to be killed like one of the other poor souls, but the sudden illness had become a key issue for the young man, causing him to get his priorities wrong.