After trading their tired horses for new ones, and gathering their gear, they were able to ride out quickly under the cover of darkness. Their dark elven armor allowed them to blend in to their surroundings, making their travel quick and undetected by the humans. Using their mana, they were able to trace the rest of the elves’ trail faintly, heading north-east towards the central Yursear kingdom. It was not until they approached the makeshift camp that they saw the humans.

The camp, or what was left of it, was surrounded in corpses, corpses of the humans.

Unlike what Silas had seen when he and his group first escaped the village, these bodies were not fresh. They had to be at least a day old. The expressions on their faces were painfully twisted into tight frowns, grimaces, and frozen screams. Silas used his mask to stop himself from inhaling the rank stench of death. Otherwise, he was afraid he would vomit on the spot.

The embers of the campfire were almost burned out, most of them had already turned black and cool, while one of the other campfires was white and hot, just at the edge of the woods, where their food had been sitting uneaten and charred, no longer edible. A burnt stench permeated the area around it, making it difficult to smell anything but the burnt flesh of dead animals. Carefully, the elven soldiers stepped through the campsite and assessed the tents left standing.

Silas approached the half-burned ruins of one of the larger tents with slow, steady steps. His hands trembled as he pushed aside the long cloth with his palm. The torn fabric swung sideways and fell to the ground with a lazy fwip, still charred at the edges where it had been burned. Stepping through the doorway, Silas was greeted by empty chains and a large hole, torn in the back of the tent.

There were numerous chains, many of them a solid steel material, that had been unlocked at some point, while others had been cut by the chain link attached to them, showing an abrupt end to the chainlink where the cuff would have been. Some of the cuffs still had blood on them, now dark red and flakey, as if it could be scraped off like rust.

The two dead humans inside the tent had been dismembered, starting at the hands. By where their hands would have been, a set of keys laid quietly, swimming in a pool of cold blood. A human sword was nearby, flaked with blood. It was obvious the humans stood no chance.  

It was cold, empty. Silas could not stand it. He wanted to scream, cry out to his lost family and ask them where they were, what had happened to them. He wanted to call out, “Cirdan! Aurelia! Mom!” at the top of his lungs, as if no one were around to hear him. He wanted to break down here, to hug himself tightly as he racked with sobs, feeling the heavy weight of guilt overtake him.  

It was not until he felt a tear roll down his cold, clammy cheek that someone called out to him.

“Silas, did you find anyone in there?” Jacob had suddenly come up behind Silas, standing in the hole in the tent wall with a weighty expression on his face, which looked odd on his usual, jovial expression.

The fabric top of the tent had already burned down, and the wood beams and stray, charred fabric was only supported by the beams placed in the middle to support the weight of the entire tent. Silas could already see through the top to the sky, where the small white lights flickered and flashed with a lonely light. Looking at these stars, Silas wanted to leave his gaze on them, to look to the stars for any guidance they could provide.

Silas already knew that one one here was left alive. His tone was low as he responded to Jacob, “No.” Silas turned to him with a lost expression, “Nothing’s here.” He carefully wiped the side of his eye with his glove, his eyes red from the ash and smoke burning his eyes.

Seeing him so despondent, Jacob felt awkward. He rubbed his arm and looked back out the door. “Come on, Silas. There are still some more places to check.” Don’t lose hope yet.

Knowing there was still places to check, Silas found some of his vigour once again. “Thank you, Jacob.” His words were quiet, but Jacob could hear them over the shouting of the other soldiers, calling out to the other villagers.

The campsite and nearby forest were swept over three times in the dark. Using magic torches, the soldiers called out to the empty ruins, burned to the ground by the flames of war. Heavy slabs of wood were moved and removed to a makeshift trash pile, and other camping materials were moved to find even slight traces of life. Not even a rat, let alone another human villager, was found. It had already been two hours, and many of the men were beginning to tire from their journey.

 Many of the other tents and supplies that were still intact had been pillaged and destroyed beyond repair. Seeing this, the group still had some hope, hope that the group of elves had found a way to escape from their human kidnappers.

But there was also a chance that the camp had been attacked and raided by another group. If the elves were caught by slave traders, they would never escape. There was no chance of survival, especially if they were taken farther into the Yursear Kingdom. The humans there would kill an elf solely based on the fact that they were of the elven race, nothing more.

“Men, there’s nothing to find here. We’ll check the surrounding area and head back to the village. There’s nothing more we can do.” One of the younger village heads had led the journey with Silas’s group and the men from the other village. All of the men thought of Silas’s village and then of their own families, and how lucky they were to have not been in the Yursear Kingdom. Otherwise, they could have lost their families, or even their own lives. “There are no traces of anything here. Any tracks were wiped out, and the rest of the supplies were burned. There’s no way we can track them.”

One of the elven soldiers from Silas’s village spoke up, “Do you think they hid those traces?” There was hope in his voice.

“Let’s hope to the Gods so.” The captain responded, walking towards his horse.

The rest of the group quickly gathered together and jumped onto their horses, checking their baggage one more time before they turned away from the dilapidated campsite with a drained look. As the group began to move forward, Silas looked back one more time before he shook his head and faced forward, the smell of ash and blood clinging to his uniform.

The sky was dark, and the stars were no longer visible. The smell of smoke lingered in the cold air as the soldiers left with empty hope.