[center][h3]Barcea, Southwestern Region[/h3]
[b]Joy[/b][/center]

The pungent, unforgettable smell of a fresh slaughter may have been the first thing to assault her senses, but it was only when she got closer to the village that the true stench of burnt corpses breached her lungs. The nauseating smell had a putrid, sulfuric sweetness to it that refused to not be noticed. Joy couldn't help but be reminded of the first time she had experienced such a smell; she could still catch a whiff of the death days later. The horse she rode on wasn't as used to the scent of death. It bucked and neighed. Unfamiliar with the creature, Joy decided against risking getting thrown off of another horse and tied it to a post outside of the razed village. Hopefully it wouldn't be able to free itself before she found some kind of information. Proceeding forward alone into the wreckage, the former captain took her bow in hand and nocked an arrow. She doubted that anybody would be able to stick around in such a putrid haze, but it was better than being surprised.

The death and smoke wrapped her body in its aroma as she cautiously toed her way through the remains of the village. The final licks of flames were lapping up the remains of the attack. She could see burnt bodies that had been cut down while trying to escape or hide in the charred remnants of crops. A limb would be poking out from underneath a collapsed building here, a tattered smock there. To the raiders the men were no different from the pigs, mercilessly slaughtered where they stood and left there to die. Joy came on to what must have been the village square. She could see the charred frame of what appeared to be a church. It appeared to be fairly intact at first despite the fire damage thanks to its stone walls, but as she gazed through the smoke cloud lingering above it Joy saw the caved-in roof that had probably given the villagers who had hidden inside one final surprise. She cautiously tapped the handle to the church door and, seeing it wasn't hot, gave it a pull. There was some give, but the door was locked. Her imagination would have to fill in the rest for now.

She limped through the rest of the village, returning her arrow to its quiver as she discovered that she was the only living soul there. Using her scabbard to keep her upright, Joy analyzed what she had come across. There appeared to have been little resistance on the villagers part, as if the attack was quick and caught them off guard. The footprints pushed deeper into the ash than hers, suggesting at least some kind of heavier armor. There were too many valuables that appeared to have been deliberately destoryed and left behind to provoke some sort of response. 

The go to answer was bandits, but almost everything she saw stood against that idea. True, bandits were vicious, bloodthirsty, and evil, but they had a sort of sense to how they operated. A vulnerable village far from any major city or guardpost was ripe for the picking, and could be harvested regularly every couple of  months with little effort or fear of retaliation. Slaughtering an entire village, burning all the crops, and destroying all the goods wasn't just wrong, it was bad business. [i]No, normal bandits aren't this deliberately wasteful,[/i] thought Joy as she chewed on her lip. [i]The only people I can think of that would be this cruel and senseless are soldiers convinced that they are doing what is right for their country and kin.[/i] She frowned. If she was right that would mean Gartian had finally stopped licking his wounds from years earlier and  knocked enough of his people into their place to organize an attack. 

A war was good news for a bandit, but Joy couldn't help but feel disgusted. Not because some villagers had been slaughtered mercilessly by H'kelan regulars, nor because this meant an end to the decade of peace.  It also wasn't the smell that made her sick, or the river of corpses she had waded through. Innocents die, that's the way it is; it was only fitting that the environment reflected that truth. No, she was disgusted with herself. When had she become so desensitized? These weren't just some villagers, they were her countrymen. She felt as if she should be outraged, even do something heroic yet stupid like swear to avenge the dead and right the wrongs of the H'kelans. There was a time when she was young that she had some sort of duty for her country and King, at least, she thought there had been. Yet now she just accepted the atrocity surrounding her as the way things were. 

“Shut up,” she said to nobody. Her head hurt, perhaps from the stench, and thinking made it only worse. Her foray into the destruction had served to be a sobering one, in both senses of the word. She felt sweat form on her furrow brow; her hand shook as she reached for her flask. The alcohol mixed with the taste of death as it filled her mouth. [i]I'll need more than that to get that flavor out of my mouth,[/i] she thought as her head cleared. Yet she did have a reason for being in this village, it would be best if she could at least stay in sight of the wagon. 

She tromped through the ash back to the remains of the church; it was the only place where she hadn't checked the dead for Sentinels or Princesses. By this point, Joy was getting a sneaking suspicion that the hunter had lied to her, either out of some kind of protest against her or some kind of duty to the royalty. [i]Good man,[/i] she thought, shaking her head in acceptance of her foolishness. It did make little sense to her that a blind teenage girl would want to travel to some backwater village so close to a dangerous boarder, let alone that her sister would allow it. As well, the lack of any real weaponry told Joy that the Sentinels had not been involved in the clearly lackluster defense of the village. Still, it would be a waste to not confirm the negative thoughts swirling around in her mind. 

Reaching the locked church, Joy first looked for another way inside. The charred stone walls weren't exactly smooth or even, but she doubted she could climb them to use the collapsed roof as an entrance. The windows, likewise, were too high and too small for even a child to fit through. The doors, it seemed, was the only option. She tried them again. They seemed weak and ready to splinter, but she couldn't force it open with her hands. Perhaps a series of well placed kicks could do the job. [i]Of course that'd be the solution,[/i] thought Joy, glancing down at her knee as it took that very moment to throb in dull pain as an added insult. [i]Maybe a horse could pull it down?[/i] Unlikely, but it was worth a shot. 

The first thing Joy saw when she made it back to the entrance of the village was the post lying horizontal on the ground, the frayed remains of a quarter of a rope still tied around the middle. She was able to fill in the rest of what had happened by what she didn't see: the horse. She gritted her teeth. [i]Now what?[/i] Her hand already had the answer to her question uncorked and to her lips before her mind could even process it. She drank, but all she could taste was the death around her. A rare burst of guttural and emotional noises lined with what possibly could have been words escaped from her throat as she spiked the empty flask into the ash. She twisted her body unnaturally in her fit of rage. Her knee screamed in pain that was almost as loud as the curse from her mouth. Collapsing onto the post in pain and frustration, Joy buried her face into her hands.

“Just stop, you idiot,” she said through gritted teeth. “What are you even trying for?”