Senna walked away from the graveyard, heading in a specific direction. Harrin was quick to follow. “So,” The young necromancer said, “Do you know of Craikdam?”

Harrin shook his head in response. He had no idea where he was. Even if he’d been buried close to where he’d died - a strange thing to think regardless of circumstances - he couldn’t remember what his own last name was, much less the geography of the surrounding area.

“It’s a small town not too far from here. The elders buried our dead here, but the graveyard has been here long before we used it. They didn’t want any undead to bother them.” She released a short, bitter laugh. “Looks like their planning worked out for them.”

Harrin personally disagreed. Sure, the newly raised and freshly deceased undead were far away from town , but it might’ve been a safer decision to put the graveyard just outside the walls. A necromancer would hardly try to raise the dead within eyeshot of an archer or a mage. Building a cemetery this far away from civilization, and with a forest blocking a direct line of sight; it may as well have been built with a necromancer in mind.

As they walked, Senna began slowing down from the purposeful stride she’d been using. Harrin reined himself in to accommodate for the changed pace, watching her curiously.

She stopped walking abruptly, and Harrin made it a few steps past her before pausing. All he had to do was glance at her face to see the doubt crowding her expression. Turning his body to fully face her, he tilted his head and released a short hiss, trying to get her attention.

Staring at the ground, she stayed wordless. Harrin was happy to wait for her to get her thoughts together.

After a few minutes, she hesitantly said, “I feel… bad, I guess. I’m asking you to go fight for me, though I can’t do anything for you.”

Harrin had no issue with the matter. She’d raised him from the dead, after all. Nothing would be too much if it meant he could find the faded faces in his memories.

The woods abruptly ended, powerful trunks and an endless green canopy giving way to flat stumps and a brilliant star-studded sky. It held little beauty for Harrin aymore. Something else drew his attention, something neither of them could have missed.

A village sat before them, only a few hundred meters away. It could barely even be called a community, composed of perhaps half a dozen buildings with a simple picket palisade defending its edges from whatever might have come its way.

It was burning.

The glow wasn't quite bright enough to drown out the stars above, but it dulled their edge. Four of the houses were still ablaze, flames snappingw and crackling at the straw roof as they consumed the wooden walls. The other three were rubble, simmering coals spitting cinders at the sky.

A blazing mound sat between the buildings. At first he thought it was livestock. Once he realized what it actually was, he had never wished he'd been wrong so badly.

Harrin swiveled to look at Senna. Her mouth was half-open, eyes glazed in shock and disbelief as she stared at the razed buildings. She slowly started walking forward, legs dragging one foot in front of the other. She broke into a run a moment later, sprinting towards what was left of Craikdam as fast as she could.

Harrin began to follow, but she had a head start. For once he was glad his sword wasn't at his side - it would have made it harder to catch up with the necromancer. He felt the heat on his bones build as he came closer, and he reached out to grab Senna's shoulder.

Pulling her to a stop, Harrin spun her around, staring her in the eyes. He made sure to put himself between her and the desecrated village.

He had no face to express with, no eyes to show his sympathy through, and yet Senna somehow saw something in him that made her freeze. "They - they said they wouldn't." She told him desperately. "They promised they wouldn't kill anyone else if we did what they told us to! We - they - we didn't hurt anyone, we didn't resist, why did they-"

All color abruptly drained from her face, the stark flames of the burning town casting strange, shifting shadows onto her clothing and skin. "I ran away." She said hoarsely.

Harrin knew where she was going, knew the dark crevices of guilt that the mind of a sole survivor could slip into when they had nowhere to go. He knew what it felt like to blame himself when there was nothing he could have done. But he couldn't speak, and so he could say nothing.

Instead, he did something he wasn't entirely comfortable with. Getting down to his knees, he pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her, hiding her face from the horrors behind her. "No," she whispered. "Don't - don't comfort me, not when-"

Her words stopped coming then, because nobody could talk while crying, and she was sobbing. Even through the haze of fogged memories, Harrin couldn't remember having met anyone so vulnerable as Senna. Whatever her life had been like before this, it must have been a comfortable and safe one.

He lifted his head to gaze at the burning village. He knew about the people who did these things to others. They were rarely desperate, and they were never repentant.

They were the sort of people who deserved to die.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harrin rummaged around in one of the houses, pulling a wooden beam aside to retrieve the scorched box underneath. Tucking it under his arm along with a singed water flask and a tattered satchel, he carefully made his way out of the rubble.

Senna was sitting behind the most intact wall, wrapped in a blanket Harrin had found. She’d been staring out over the grasslands for a while now. The undead was almost worried to disturb her.

As he pushed piles of wood off of a narrow cabinet, he couldn’t help but wonder about Senna. She could summon the undead and dismiss them as well, but what else could she do? He barely knew anything about her.

He was trying not to look at the mound of bodies behind him. Some of them were still recognizable, even if he knew none of the faces. There was something horrifyingly removed about the men and women who were dead, something empty from the few eyes that were left in their sockets.

It was a lot worse when he saw a smaller limb.

Flicking the latch upward, Harrin opened the cabinet’s door and froze. If he’d still had a face, he would have smiled.

Setting down the other packages, he reached into the cabinet and removed the sword from inside.

It was no weapon of legend, but rather just a good sword. The leather-wrapped hilt was stained and worn from use, but the crossguard seemed to be in good condition. The blade, a little less than three feet in length, was polished and clean. As he held it out in front of him, he felt the weight settle at the center of the hilt. It was well-balanced, a sword made by someone who knew what they were doing.

Upon closer inspection, Harrin made out two blockish glyphs at the base of the blade, repeated on either side of the flat. He didn’t recognize them, but the style looked dwarvish in design. It made the sword seem that much more satisfying… and that much more curious.

Craikdam could barely have been called a village. A few houses and a palisade, with a small stockade for livestock. Who in such a small town would be in possession of a dwarvish-made blade? Moreover, it was clearly sized for a human. It couldn’t have been stolen.

Shaking his drifting thoughts away like a cobweb, Harrin sheathed the sword in the rotting scabbard at his hip, inwardly promising to find a more appropriate vehicle for such a weapon. Lifting the other items he’d obtained, he headed back over to Senna.

The budding necromancer glanced up at him as he approached, getting to her feet. She left the blanket on, Harrin noted. “What are those?”

He set the box down and opened, showing her the carefully arranged loaves of paper-wrapped bread he’d found. It was all for her. He hadn’t felt any twinges of hunger yet, and he could see his own ribs. He doubted either fact would change any time soon.

Trembling, Senna reached into the box. She nearly looked afraid as she touched one of the loaves. “These are Barin’s,” She whispered, almost too quietly for Harrin to hear.

Harrin patted her shoulder, giving her a brief squeeze before taking a step back. Wiping her eyes, she tore a piece away and began to eat.

Picking the box back up, Harrin closed it and tucked it under his arm. Taking a deep breath, Senna swung the satchel he’d found over her shoulder. There was something new in her eyes, something hard that hadn’t been there before. “Let’s follow them.” She told Harrin, looking at the muddied bootprints stamped into the ground.

“And then let’s kill them.”