Marked Ones: Advent of the Demon Prince

Instead of heading back, the party continued on the route to the village. At this point, it was obvious the mist was centered on the rough location of the hunting camp, so they would not get lost if they kept heading to where the mist thickened.

Lucius continued to lead the party, though his skills that made him the best scout were still hampered by the mist for some reason. He still had the full faculty of his hearing, so he was still at a major advantage over the rest of them.

Being here made him exceptionally nervous. If there were any sounds, he doubted he would be able to suppress the urge to jump. His sanity felt like it was on a razor's edge. No doubt the others were feeling the same, if not worse, since they did not have the luxury of a heads up on anything that would approach them.

When they finally reached the location, Lucius' eyes settled on the center of the camp. For some reason, like the eye of a storm, the camp itself was completely free of any of the strange mist. Also, inside this circle of perceived safety, he had his full senses return to him, which let him exhale a slight sigh of relief.

"Well this is strange…" Paul said while pointing to something next to one of the cabins.

On the ground was what appeared to have been a person at one point. Their face was gaunt and the clothes they were wearing seemed to be too massive for their frame. Paul cautiously approached the body and lifted the shirt.

"Skin and bones underneath. The fingernails are yellow… it looks like starvation." Paul deduced.

"Starvation? How?" Jen seemed extremely confused. She conversed with the other brain in the group, Rena. While Jen did not let her make many, if any, command decisions, she still valued the girl's knowledge. Lucius only partially listened to their conversation.

According to Rena, it could take up to two or three months for someone to die of starvation. That tracked because they had missed two or three drop of exchanges with the city. However, when they found more bodies, they noticed something else odd. When faced with complete starvation, and without other options, people would likely turn to cannibalism as a last-ditch effort to survive.

Here in the camp, there was no sign of any such behavior.

Also, every single person, all fifteen of them, died of starvation. If they did not resort to cannibalism to survive, Rena suspected they would choose to end things themselves, but there was no sign of that. Finally, the representative from the city was nowhere to be seen. Every person here appeared to be one of the actual residents of the camp.

"I don't like this at all." Lucius grumbled.

"And you think any of us do?" Jen countered.

He chose not to respond because he thought he had seen something move in the mist on the edge of the camp.

"Something is definitely there. But I can't see, smell, or hear anything beyond this camp. Now that we are here…I have a feeling we aren't going to leave until we catch whatever is causing this."

"Lucius… please don't say that…" Rena whimpered. One of her weaknesses was horror stories. He always wondered how that would impact her when they went to fight undead, but it had not yet come up. Undead gave off a strange sort of mana that the repulsed the living though, so undead were not responsible for this. It was still a cliché setting for a horror novel though.

"Jen… do you know of any monsters that emit a mist?" Lethen asked.

The party leader put her hand on her chin and closed her eyes, pondering for several minutes. "I have heard of a few…but they live in swamps and near the ocean as well as lakes. There are none of those things within several miles of here. And for the lakes in the forest, none of those monsters inhabit this region either…so I don't know what the cause is."

"Great, so we are potentially stuck in an abandoned camp, surrounded by corpses, a mist that impairs our senses, and we probably can't leave unless we figure out what is causing and either stop or kill it?" Lethen's tone was pure annoyance and complaint. You couldn't blame him though, because it was rather inconvenient.

Once again, Lucius eyed the movement of shadows on the edge of the camp… before it came to a stop. It seemed humanoid in shape and for some reason he felt like it was staring at him. At the foot of the shadow was a log that extended out of the mist. He quietly motioned for the party to look where he was looking.

While they watched the shadow, he watched the log. It seemed to get shorter…less and less of it was sticking out of the mist. Their circle of safety was closing, and the rate at which it was threatening to swallow up the camp was increasing.

"Everyone. Get to the large cabin. The mist is closing in and if we are going to be surrounded by it, at least we should be in the same place." Jen shouted.

They darted for the largest cabin in the camp, which happened to be the one closest to the shadow's location. Once inside, the rate of expansion of the mist increased more and more. From the windows of the cabin, the watched as one by one, the other buildings were swallowed up, until the world around their safe haven was pure gray.

"Well ain't that just great…" Paul muttered.

Rena was close to hyperventilating. It seemed she was scared out of her mind as a horror story came to life around her. Lucius reached out to her and pulled her into a hug, pressing her face into his chest.

"It's okay, I got you." He stroked her hair gently while comforting her. As he did so, he could not help but wonder to himself if she was always this soft…and small…and did she always smell this nice?

"Alright everyone… looks like this is home for a little while…thankfully we all have several days of rations, and I haven't found a buyer for the Quillow Beast meat yet, so we have several weeks worth of that available if we ration it appropriately. It will be a while for the same thing to happen to us like the residents." Jen advised.

Her words made Rena shrink herself into his hold even closer. She lightly sobbed, though it wasn't loud or obvious enough for others to notice. If anything, they seemed to be purposefully avoiding eye contact with the two. However, he could not be bothered to worry about what the party may or may not think.

He kept his eyes glued to the window at the shadow moving slowly through the fog, as if pacing in front of their cabin.

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