The dying sun bled a suffocating orange across the horizon, casting long shadows over the four bodies scattered amidst the clearing.
Three of them were corpses.
The fourth was just waiting to catch up.
I lay there, swallowing thick saliva to wet a throat gone dry, staring unblinkingly at the darkening canopy while the forest settled into an oppressive silence around me.
My head rested right beside Arlath's.
If one ignored the Kukri protruding from his skull like a horn, a passerby might mistake us for the best of friends, napping after a long hunt.
[Nay, dude?]
All that replied to me were his dead, glassy eyes staring wide into mine, frozen in that final moment of terror.
The blood soaking my clothes had long since dried, pulling at the fine hairs on my arms with every shallow breath I took as a constant reminder of the bath I'd taken.
[Nom… must be home… now…]
