When Ewan and Kidd bolted into the forest, Lance stood in a field of carnage, panting with cracked breath, his grip on the scythe trembling, and his shield lay by his feet. Blood and guts drenched the man as a pool of red rippled under him, and his soaked hair had pieces of eyeballs and bones entangled about. Not a single enemy had remained whole, the war machine had culled them to their last life, ripping them apart as pieces of maimed corpses carpeted the forest’s earth.

  “I’m fine, sir,” Lance said in a grinding voice, then spat some pieces of guts mixed with blood to the side. “I just understood what my path entails.” He looked down at his scythe. “It wants to drink the blood of my enemies, only then will it let me go further…”

  “Are you in control?” Ewan asked, walking up to him, his boots splashing the swamp of blood.

  “Yes, sir,” Lance replied.

  “Do you feel anything off?” Ewan asked again.

  “No, sir,” Lance said. “But I’m worried if I’ll still be myself if I drown myself in carnage.”

  “As long as your soul experiences no physical distortion because of this, then no matter how you change, you’ll still be you. Whether you like yourself or not at that point, that’s up to you,” Ewan said. “Just for precaution though, keep an eye on your soul space.”

  “I have a spell that can monitor your soul, it’s called Spiritmould,” Stefan said, standing on the side with Nana with some splatters of red on them. “I’ll teach you later, you can keep your soul in check with it.”

  Lance nodded, wiping the blood dripping his eyes.

  “Go, clean up first,” Ewan said. “We need to scour the island and loot whatever we find. And you, fartface, go change your pants.”

  “I told you I wanted to change it before the battle, you didn’t listen,” Kidd grumbled, and flew back to Stormfalcon with Lance.

  ….

  The cracked island tendered only scraps and a cluttered mess of a lair on their hunt, not even the personal belongings fetched anything of value. The pirates lived and died by the blade, they looted and earned for today, tomorrow was never their concern, and it showed in the search. Still, Ewan held some hope for the loot, anything that could make it all worthwhile. Just the reward wasn’t enough anymore, the risky encounter with the Guardians deemed it so. Thus, he went for another round, scouring the island and the butchered corpses.

  …

  …

  …

  “Boss, this is the only thing I found in his room,” Kidd said, and handed him an overused diary with useless ramblings, deep seated resentment towards his hometown, and a yellowed photograph stuck between the pages. It showed a family of three—the albino man as the husband, sitting with his wife who held their little boy on her lap. The back of it wrote some numbers, coordinates most likely, and some illegible words that lost to the thrashes of time, dried tears, and human touch.

  “Do you want to check it out?” Kidd asked.

  “Hmm, we can take a detour,” Ewan said, and the two waited for others on the beach. The scattered birds thronged back to the island with the break of dawn, and the morning breeze and the gentle rays of sun ebbed the smell of death lingering on the island. Though fractured to its core, nature would eventually heal this home of many, washing away the traces of the bloodshed and the savagery.

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  “Still nothing.” Nana came back, shaking her head, and soon Lance exited the forest with Stefan.

  “Let’s go then,” Ewan said, carrying the three with his Ryvia, while Kidd flew on his own. “Let’s check the coordinates before heading back to Fallsard.”

  ….

  The coordinates led them to an isle, green and verdure, but scant. The waves blasted against the rocky shore, its splatters reaching for the high cliff, and logs and shattered bits of ships choked its only cove.

  Stormfalcon halted at a distance, and Kidd scouted the area, wary against ambushes and traps, however unlikely it was. When he surfaced and gave the green light, Ewan took Stefan and Nana and flew over, leaving Lance behind to stand guard, also giving him some alone time to think things through. He’d already practiced the spell on the way, but he still had to get over his hesitation if he were to move ahead on this path. If he couldn’t trust his weapons, he would have no future as a Reaper.

  When over the isle’s sky, a single scan of Ewan’s Ryvia netted him positive results, and Kidd’s scan endorsed it—a dugout in the middle of the woods was what they were looking for. Yet, the ‘loot’ Ewan came here for wasn’t exactly in the form he wanted. And when its wooden door creaked open, as the stench of piss and shit mixed with the hint of mold rushed out, the scene through the surging dust confirmed it.

  A cluster of emaciated children crammed the clobbered room, mindlessly mumbling away, squirming in the claustrophobic confines. Grime and dirt smeared their skins, cobwebs tangled their hair, spiders crawled on them, yet they neither budged nor hushed. A centipede snaked into a kid’s nostrils, peeking its head out from his mouth, but it only hampered the pronunciation of his mutterings. They even ignored the rotting bloated corpse in the corner, colonies of maggots wriggling out of its mouth, nose, and eyes; they just maffled away.

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