"Get away from me! You're just as much of a monster as them!"

"Yeah, but how many monsters were there before now? 5. Now there's one, so I'd say that's an upgrade." She fought me as I tried to untie her for some time, so I eventually gave up and called my horse again, wrapping her arms around my chest and taking off. "All right, which way do I go?"

"..."

"Do you not want to see your family again? Which way?" She said nothing for a few moments, and then finally pointed north. "All right, let's go then." The ride there was relatively silent, but the one thing on my mind was how unsurprised she was by my powers. Had she seen someone else like me before? Or maybe that was another part of why she referred to him as a monster? These thoughts went through my mind for a while, until I noticed the small skyline of a village in the growing sunrise.

Soon the awful smell hit like a brick against my face; the smell of burnt flesh. "No... No!" I spurred my horse, and sped up towards the village as she squirmed around as much as she could behind me. "Untie me! Do it now! Please do it now!"

"I was trying to do that earlier, and now if I do you might do something irrational."

"Let me go! Untie these bonds this instant!" I jumped off the horse, and then helped her off before making it fade away. "Wait here." "Wait, what?!" Picking her up in my arms, I set her down between a house and a shed, hoping that the hiding place would be sufficient.

"I'll check it out, and come back if it's safe."

Walking back onto the main path of the village I have no idea what to expect, and the loss of concentration forces me to put more effort into keeping my guns from dispelling. As I progress through the town, the gruesome smells start to grow stronger, and I fight to keep my vomit from forcing its way out. One by one, I kick down the doors of the homes with a thud, and what is inside only brings me more questions than answers. All of them are completely empty of people, but the interiors are always messier than the last, with furniture scattered, windows shattered, and the occasional bloodstains splashed on the walls, ceiling and floors. "What happened to these people?" A few minutes more of searching, and I decide to follow my nose, which eventually led me downtown, where the smell was the strongest.

I turned the corner of a bookstore, and what I saw, nothing could have prepared me for. Crowded around the villages' fountain were enormous piles of dead bodies; bodies of every shape, age, and size. Old men, young women, even...

Wait... Where are the children?! I clawed my way through the piles and realized that none of the children were here. What would anyone do with a bunch of helpless kids?! Then I realized that even though this area was where the smell was most intense, not a single corpse here had even a burn mark. That's when I noticed the smoke coming out of the manhole, and decided I would have to go down there. Dispelling my guns and then reluctantly lifting the lid, I started to descend down the slimy ladder, trying my best not to let my fingers lose their grip. Once I closed the lid again, I was immediately hit with a gust of heat and smoke that slapped me in the face, my only comfort now being the empty darkness that wrapped around me like a blanket.

Screeeeee! I started panicking as I felt a short string of slimy flesh make a loud splat as it made impact with my head, knocking off my hat. Soon it began wiggling around in my messy black hair, followed by more that fell from above, and now I feel the moisture spreading across my scalp. Trying to keep climbing down and bat them off at the same time, I slipped, plummeting down the narrow space as I tried to stop myself from falling by finding a grip on a ladder rung or loose brick, but only slowed myself down as I fell, hitting the grungy stone floor of the sewer with my back. First I batted the top of my head, knocking the strange worms off of my head and spreading their insides along the floor with my boot.

I picked up my cattleman's hat again, adjusting it on my head before moving on towards the smell and the intense heat, not quite knowing what to expect, but growing to expect the worst. Now I made my way towards the heat and stench, pulling two guns out of the smoke and preparing for a fight. For what felt like hours, I weaved through the endless labyrinth of a sewer until I found a brittle wooden door, with a small barred window that let the dim illumination pour into the hall I stood in. The smell was the worst here, and I wanted with everything inside me to turn around and run for my life, but I'm already too far, and the possibility of my father being involved in this was too high to pass down. He's the only one who could possibly indulge in this level of carnage. I kicked down the door and scoured the room with my pistols on the ready, but he wasn't to be seen.

"Ah, a hero!" I looked in the dark corner and made out the rough shape of a man, and he came forward into the light to reveal that he was what seemed to be a priest of some sort. His shirt, pants and shoes were black, and the collar of his shirt had a protruding white cloth. "You have to help those kids, they're in that next room!" He tried to come closer, but instead he fell to the floor. That's when I noticed the chain attached to his ankle.