Argh! I groaned. My eyes felt heavy. But somehow my body, light.

  Everything around me swayed. Or was I the one who was doing the swaying?

  I forced my eyes open. I hadn’t noticed till now but someone was carrying me, panting. “Kayle?” Hoarse. Was that really my voice?

  I didn’t recognize him at first but it did seem like him.

  “You’re up. Can you run?” He let me down from his back.

  Blood across his face, cuts and bruises-

  I didn’t like being carried like a thing but I didn’t have any complaints. I looked at my body. All the limbs were attached and nothing was out of the ordinary. So, I nodded and we both ran. If you can call swaying and not falling down running, then yes, we were running.

  But why were we running?

  “What happened to them?” I asked still in a daze. I couldn’t really accept the reality but I had to face it at some point. There was no way I could just forget about it anyway.

  “They’re dead.” Kayle didn’t look at me, he didn’t rebuke me like usual either. He just ran. And I ran with him. “They’re dead.”

  There were no words between us, just pure silence.

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  there just wasn’t anything to say.

  Nothing.

  Awoo!!

  The forest in the night was a scary place but strangely it didn’t make me feel afraid. There was just one emotion in my mind, in my heart; grief.

  And perhaps…

  Regret.

  “What about their-”

  Kayle didn’t look back. He just kept running. He ran faster than me and he avoided the questions. I couldn’t blame him. He was the leader and he knew what he was doing. I already knew that something very bad happened, but I couldn’t bring myself to come to terms with it. I just couldn’t.

  “Kayle!” And yet- yet my words… just-

  Damn it!

  He stopped. He just stopped outright- “They’re evil. They’ll destroy us. And there’s more than one-” He didn’t look at me.

  But I could tell-

  Horror.

  There was horror in his voice.

  “There’s more?”

  He started running again.

  And so, did I.

  Not looking back.

  Not again.

  But really-

  Those things-

  There was more?

  ***

  How long had we been running?

  I didn’t know.

  Were we being followed?

  I had no way of knowing.

  What about the village?

  Was everything okay there?

  Questions.

  Yet.

  No answers.

  Lots and lots of questions.

  But no answers.

  We stopped.

  No-

  Kayly stopped and I crashed onto his behind-

  “Warmth?”

  Kayle sniffed the air. “Is it me or is it…” He paused, staring up. “Bright? And smokey-”

  I stood next to him, staring at the forest- just Infront of the village.

  Yeah, though roughly 4 in the morning, it was bright.

  The orange kind of bright.

  And the smoke?

  “You don’t think-” My words didn’t want to leave my mouth.

  But-

  We ran harder-

  And reached the village.

  Or what was supposed to be our village.

  “ARGHhH!!!”

  But it was only filled with screams-

  The things with red and yellow eyes-

  And-

  Lots-

  Lots of fire….

  “Holy fucking god….”