The blistering-cold sting of a winter's kiss smacked across my stiff, unshaven cheek. The smell of necrosis and oxidizing pine glutted the air, each breath were as if I had gasped on the kindling whispers of a fires' glowing ember.
The snow was as black as night and the secrets that lie in the rubble of the fire, were as dark as the Devil's soul.
A trail of crimson-red blood sprinkled the spotted, powdery snow, leading behind a devastated building who’s roof had exhaustedly fallen victim to defeat.
The closer I got to the eradicated house, the more ample the rapine became.
I touched the vanquished wood that somberly stuck out from the ruin of the house. The pillar spread it's arm out, as if to beg for mercy. I touched it nimbly and at the slight of my hand, it collapsed into oblivion.
Her hair was like that of a raven's breast and her skin was perfectly pale and smooth, like a fine cremé. The blood that encompassed her was a deep maroon, it gingerly glistened in the ashen snow.
Her cream colored dress with wood-brown lacing was ripped and tarnished with slashes of blood. Her icy-blue eyes looked lifelessly towards the west, where an ominous forest stretched before the village.
Her rose-red lips lay agape and blood dripped slowly down her stone-cold cheek onto the, already, bleeding snow.
Her neck had been gashed open, bits of frost covered the exposed tendons and lacerated muscles. The rive pillaged nearly half of her slim neck; starting from her defined jaw-bone down to her emancipated collarbone.
A row of gashes sunk into her chest; you could see the white of her ribs from beneath the slices and blood pooled from each cut.
The unforgiving wind stirred again and I hurriedly embraced myself in my thick, wolf-skin coat and pulled my reaper-like hood down, shadowing my frostbitten face. It's lily-soft texture caressed my near bare chest.
As the wind picked up I caught the stench of a familiar smell; macabre and fear. The scent drove me to the center of the village. The putrid odor became more toxic as I reached the rear of the abandoned infirmary. It was the only building nearly untouched by the blaze. I undesirably walked around the right-side of the infirmary to the front, but only be met by unforeseen horror.
Splattered grimly across the wall was slaughter of several men and women. Pieces of decaying skin and innards saturated the fire-licked wood. The heads of the lifeless victims were stuck on rusty spears jutting from the floorboards. The men and women's eyelids had but sliced off, leaving their empty eye-sockets where crows hungrily ripped out their eyes. Their tongues had be gouged out with an razor-sharp knife, blood stained their face from their eyes down to their dirty, lame chins. In utter terror, I looked slightly to the left to see something maleficent. There, on the wall beside the gore, was a word written crudely in blood. The clotted blood unmasked the culprit of this solum murder. "Werewolf."
A shiver of dark and dormant memories slithered down my spine.
It was time to leave this God-forsaken, morose place.
I backed away from the sinister writing and carnage, onto the creaking steps.
As I reached my leather boot down to the bottom step, I heard the cry of a twig breaking just behind me.
I fleetly spun around to see an enormous, ferocious beast standing before me. My jaw dropped and my throat went barren dry at the sight of the seven foot monster who was covered in corse, dark-chestnut fur. I idiotically looked at his muzzle and hands to see blood trickling from his barring teeth and serrated claws.
My eyes timorously rose to his vibrant, grey eyes. They stared right back at me and a sudden , well-known twinkle glimmered in his eye. Sorrow and agony washed over me and I felt my entire body go cold.
"Not you too Alistair."