Aether Chronicles: Birth Of A Legend-Chapter 342: Maybe They’ve Followed Us

Dahlia and Yuki made it to the jungle just as the sunset over the world, the duo found a safe place to rest as darkness fell. By the time they slid under the roots of a fallen tree, howls and screams began echoing through the air. Night Creatures appeared in hordes, washing over the land, hunting anything with warm blood.

She watched as giant Jungle Trolls were taken down in a tide of death and turned to the cat woman. ''This place is hell, do you think there will be a boat?''

Yuki scanned their surroundings, answering. ''Most likely, this place looks to have fallen recently. There are corpses all over the place.''

The young woman pointed not far from them, where a caravan of refugees was ambushed while trying to escape a nearby town. Both shivered at the shredded bodies that was left on the road. They pressed deeper under the roots, bellies to damp earth, the bark splintering against her cheek.

Dahlie watched as Yuki's tail swayed side to side, the only part of her still moving, twitching like heartbeats. Following that, the first hour was a nightmare. Night Creatures poured past in swarms, claws scraping stone, wings blotting starlight. A monsters bellow cut short with a wet crunch.

Hours dragged on. The screams thinned to whimpers, then to silence broken only by the drip of blood from leaves overhead. Dawn came, light filtering through canopy in thin knives of light. The jungle steamed; carcasses steamed harder. Nothing moved except insects already feasting.

Yuki eased out first, ears flat, scanning. Dahlia followed, legs numb, every joint protesting. They left the root-hollow without a word. The caravan lay twenty paces away, wagons overturned, canvas shredded, bodies twisted into shapes no spine should hold. A child's shoe sat upright in the mud.

The two women took a crumpled map stained with blood. The pier was marked in charcoal at the island's southern horn. No promises, just ink. They moved faast, following trails that smelled of fresh blood. Morning sun burned off the mist and revealed the settlement, black smoke raising into the air.

Following that, the duo crested the last hill they needed to climb to get to their destination. It looked almost peaceful until Dahlia spotted the gate hanging open, one hinge torn free, and the watchtower empty, its bell rope swaying in the breeze like a hanged man. Yuki's ears flicked forward. ''Still warm,'' she murmured. ''Fires are fresh.''

Dahlia glanced around, surprised as she readied her spells. ''Then someone's alive in there.''

''Or something's keeping the fires lit.''

Afterward, they started down the slope, boots silent on wet leaves, the settlement growing larger with every step, walls, smoke, and the clatter of metal on metal drifting on the breeze. When getting closer, Dahlia noticed the gate was open, but the iron hinges had been melted, metal running down the posts in frozen silver tears.

A body hung from the crossbeam by its own hair, scalp peeled forward like a hood, eyes wide and reflecting the sun. Inside, the ground was carpeted. Not with grass or dirt, but with people. Hundreds. They lay in heaps, limbs tangled together by the way they'd tried to crawl over one another.

'What nightmares are happening?' Dahlia thought, shocked by the brutality of it all.

Skin had been flayed in perfect sheets and pinned to the poles like laundry, flapping in the breeze. One sheet still twitched; the nerves hadn't realized the owner was dead. A woman sat upright against a well, knees splayed, belly opened. Her intestines had been pulled out and braided into the rope that now tied her wrists to her ankles.

Dahlia noticed the face was untouched, eyes milky, mouth frozen mid-scream. Someone had jammed a baby's rattle into her throat; the bell inside jingled when the wind shifted. The fires still burned. That was the worst part. Fresh wood crackled beneath iron pots, and the pots were full.

Hands floated in the cold broth, knuckles gnawed to the bone. A man's head bobbed beside them, lips peeled back. The smell hit next: copper, shit, and something sweeter, like pork left too long in the sun. Yuki made a sound, low, animal. Dahlia's stomach lurched, but nothing came up.

She'd already emptied it somewhere back in the jungle. Every hut had been turned inside out. Thatch roofs peeled back, revealing the families inside arranged in a grusome display, a father nailed to his own table by his forearms, his children stacked beneath him like firewood, mouths sewn shut with their own hair.

One hut had no bodies at all, just a single word carved into the dirt floor in looping, childish letters: HUNGRY. The clatter they'd heard from the ridge resolved into motion. A dog, maybe, or what was left of one, dragged itself across the square on broken legs. Its fur was gone, skin sloughed off in wet sheets, ribs glowing white.

It left a red trail that steamed. When it reached the well, it tried to drink from the broth and drowned with a gurgle. Dahlia moved forward, only to kick a sword that was seent crashing acros the street. The sound was too loud. Somewhere in the ruins, something answered, a wet, dragging scrape, like a sack of meat being pulled over stone.

''The docks,'' she whispered, pointing into the distance. ''We need to go now.''

Half of it had collapsed into the shallows, timbers jutting up. The other half burned in fits and starts, black smoke curling into the sky. But there tied crooked to a remaining post, was a boat. Small, single-masted, its hull cracked and scored, but afloat. A torn sail hung limp against the mast.

Yuki froze, ears flat, eyes fixed on the waterline. Something moved beneath the planks, faint ripples, spreading outward. Dahlia's heart thudded once, twice, then she ran. ''Go!'' she hissed.

The wood groaned under their weight. Each step made it buck and creak, water rushing up through the gaps. Behind them came that noise again closer than it had any right to be the scrape, the drag, a low breath that wasn't wind. Dahlia didn't dare turn around. The boat bobbed, knocking against the post like it was impatient.

She jumped the last gap and landed hard inside, knees cracking against the planks. Yuki vaulted after her, cutting the rope with one slash of her claws. The boat drifted. For a second, neither moved. Just the sound of water lapping at the hull, the jungle breathing behind them.

Then something heavy hit the pier, once, twice, and the boards split. A hand groped over the edge, fingers long, skin translucent. Another followed, a shape pulled itself up, slick and pale, dripping like wax in the sun. ''Push off!'' Dahlia shouted.

Yuki was already moving, shoving with an oar, snarling under her breath. The boat lurched free, spinning, catching the current. The thing at the pier leaned forward, head cocked, mouth too wide, teeth clattering like pebbles in a jar. It watched them go. The wind caught, filling the shredded sail.

The pier fell away, the beach shrinking to a line of black and red. Dahlia sat down hard, chest heaving, blood pounding behind her eyes. Yuki kept her gaze fixed ahead, toward the open water, toward the thin horizon bleeding gold. Neither spoke for a long time as the panic calmed down.

Only when the island was a dotbehind them did Dahlia whisper. ''We made it.''

Yuki's tail twitched once, slow, uncertain. ''Maybe,'' she said. ''If the sea's still safe.''

The boat drifted on, cutting through the water as the island shrank behind them, black smoke curling like a warning into the sky, covering the land they were just on. Dahlia leaned over the side, scanning the waves for movement, heart still hammering in her chest thanks to the sight she witnessed.

Yuki crouched, tail low, ears swiveling toward every sound, the distant crash of the jungle, the sigh of the wind, the whisper of something underwater. The current pulled them farther from the island, but the sense of being watched didn't fade. Shadows flickered beneath the surface, shapes too large and wrong to be fish.

Dahlia gripped the oar, knuckles white, and whispered. ''Maybe they've followed us.''

Yuki's eyes narrowed, catching the faintest ripple trailing the boat. Her claws scraped against the wood as she leaned forward, low and ready. ''Not yet,'' she murmured, her voice a growl, ''But they will.''

The sun climbed higher, burning away the morning mist, and with it the world felt more exposed. The sea stretched endlessly ahead, pale and indifferent, but that didn't make it safe. Dahlia's mind ran through possibilities, a storm, a floating carcass, worse, something alive.

''I wonder how bad it is on the mainland,'' she commented.

Yuki turned to her with a grimace. ''It's bad, if an island ended up like, how do you think the empire will fair in such a thing?''

Dahlia shivered and muttered. ''I hope everyone else is okay,I know Rae would've found trouble.''