“Oh, I’m just looking for honest beast-slaying work,” she said.

“Truly?” doubted the boy. “Or are you here to stir conflict? To undermine us even more after what your kin have done?!”

Accusations spilled from his mouth, misdirected anger blazing out of him as he gripped his rifle. The noise woke the old guardsman from his stupor, and the old man admonished his counterpart, “Fool, what did I tell you about antagonizing foreigners?! Shut your mouth before you get us in trouble!”

“Look, I wasn’t even on the continent during the war,” she interrupted, drawing stares from both the guards. A raised eyebrow from the old man and plain confusion from the boy.

“A treasure hunter, then? Count yerself lucky, then. I’d take a hundred cannibals o’er this travesty of a war anyday,” the elder responded, drifting off into a nostalgic daydream for a brief moment before he snapped back to reality. “Still, that don’t explain yer purpose fer bein’ here. Why come to a war-struck town at the edge o’ the Exclusion Zone?”

Something about the way the old man looked and spoke to her told Zelsys that he saw a reflection of his younger self in her. Whether that impression was reality or merely a misplaced assumption, she decided to play along. After all, she had begun walking this path the moment she told her purpose for entry to that officer.

“Just a Fog-breather looking to do some honest beast-slaying,” she said, knowing full-well it would draw attention to her.

“Truly? A’ight, I won’t try to stop you,” the old guard said, much to the younger man’s visible frustration. Nevertheless, the youth refrained from challenging his elder, and so they were granted passage, this being no more than the old man retrieving a bulky keyring and unlocking a smaller door in the gate for them to walk through.

The four stepped onto a main street of white cobbles, white-painted buildings, and bright red shingle roofs. They leisurely strode down it as they looked about and took in their surroundings, with Makhus surprisingly taking the lead. “Gotta sell off a bottle or two, you’ll get a proper payment yet,” remarked the swordsman offhandedly, momentarily turning his gaze to Zelsys.

Few people were out and about, and even among them there was considerable disparity. It took a moment to realize, but it quickly became obvious after the third granny passed by and shot them a scared look. Willowdale was inhabited mostly by the young and the old, with a very small minority of those in-between. Zelsys took to mentally categorizing the people she saw, and it only confirmed this suspicion.

“Old. Old. Old. Young. Old. Young. Young. Old. Old. Young…”

She drifted away into a dissociative state, remaining aware of her surroundings as she followed the swordsman’s lead down the street and into a small shop on a street corner, counting people as she went. Makhus spoke with the surly man across the counter, momentarily breaking into an accent so thick she could barely understand.