Death was cold – cold and lonely – much like the box Rena’s father had locked her in when she was nine years old. Trapped in that dark box, she had feared she would never see the sun again. This box was worse, nebulous and undefined, leaving her unable to grasp its nature. She pounded on invisible walls and screamed in silence. It wasn’t that she believed she might escape. There was no escape from death. Rather, she wished to discover if the afterlife had anything more to offer. Other than despair, she found nothing.
She grew aware of a light and realized it had been there for some time, hanging dimly at the edge of her vision. Slowly, the light shifted until it was directly before her, bright and intense and…warm.
The heat of the light soothed the side of her face. It felt like…life. Is this Issal? Has god come for me? Will he judge me for what I’ve done – for what I am? Rena knew condemnation would follow such a judgement. She was evil. Her father had been sure to hammer that truth into her brain.
Something wet dropped into her eye and caused her to blink. She opened her eyes to the morning sun shining on the right side of her face. A drop of cold water ran down one cheek as another drip landed on the bridge of her nose. Snowmelt, she thought.
When she tried to move, she found it very difficult. Something, no, someone lay on top of her, limp and heavy, weighing her down. She tried to shift toward the sun, but something sticking up beside her prevented it. Feeling it with her hand, she found it to be wood, damp and sticky. Sliding away from it, she was able to pull herself from beneath the other person and roll onto her stomach, jerking her hand away when a splinter impaled her palm. She pulled it free and tossed the shard of wood aside. Broken and charred boards surrounded her, jutting up in every direction.
When she spun around, she found Kwai-Lan staring at her, his gaze lifeless. A broken board, the end covered in blood, stuck up from the man’s back. Rena realized that he had fallen with her when the roof collapsed and ended up on top of her. Somehow, she had survived, despite the fall, the fire, and the cold weather.
Rising to her feet, Rena studied what remained of Vallerton.
Most of the buildings had collapsed and burned. The barricade was nothing but a pile of charred wood, similar to the front wall of the inn. The charred remains of the monstrous rabbits littered the street, many pinned to the ground, others lying atop one another in piles, charred and pink with burns and occasional patches of black fur. Nothing stirred. There was no sound, not even the wind. Rena found herself wondering if anyone had survived. She didn’t even know how long she had slept. A jolt of terror shook her core when she realized that the survivors might have already left town, thinking her dead.
Alone. I can’t be alone.
With a sense of urgency, she climbed from the wreckage, over what was left of the blackened front porch, and onto the gravel road. The snow was gone from the area, melted away by the fire. She picked her way through the slain animals, unnaturally oversized but now appearing as innocent as any other rabbit. Seeing them in the daylight, she found their numbers beyond what she had anticipated, exceeding a hundred in total.
Dead men lay among the monsters – or parts of men in some cases. Bloody, broken, burned, every one she passed was undoubtedly dead. The bright sun above seemed out of place amid such horror.
A pile of ash is all that remained of the massive tree they had set ablaze. The heat of the Chaos-charged rock, coupled with the naphtha applied to the trunk, had fed the inferno and left less behind than one might expect. The rock, so blackened it seemed to absorb the surrounding light, lay among those ashes like a marker for the pyre that had consumed the tree.
Once she was thirty feet beyond the remains of the tree, she found the road covered in snow – snow filled with massive rabbit tracks.
She followed the road to the intersection and turned east, stepping in the tracks created by frequent trips between town and the mines while the men were constructing the trap. Despite the surrounding snow, the sun was warming her and causing the surrounding pines to drop white clumps from their boughs as she passed by. The forest was quiet without even a bird chirping as Rena followed the trail down into the mining pit and crossed to the familiar tunnels.
The darkness of the tunnel welcomed her, and the fear of being left alone bubbled up, rising to a crescendo as she reached the door. She took a deep breath, said a prayer to Issal, and knocked.
Silence.
With her heart racing, she knocked again. The echo made the tunnels sound hollow, lacking the life she prayed would be waiting.
Tears began tracking down her face and she slumped to her knees, her head hanging as she stared toward the tunnel floor. Hope had fled her, despair returning in full force.
A sound caused her to open her eyes. She looked up and found Tindle holding a glowlamp in one hand, an axe in the other. He blinked in shock.
“You…you’re alive?”
Rena looked down at herself. Her coat was covered in Kwai-Lan’s blood, her hands blackened with soot. I wonder how bad my face appears, she thought.
Swallowing in an attempt to wet her dry throat, she gazed up at him and wiped her eyes dry. “I guess I am.” She croaked. “Did anyone else survive?”
He dropped his axe and scrambled forward, putting his hand beneath her arm and helping her to her feet. “You should come in and sit down.”