Vilcība walked along the questionable dirt road. His head had been pounding since he'd had that single glass of absinthe. Headaches weren't new to him, but this one felt different.

It wasn't his usual raw, uncontrollable pain that made him want to curl up and scream. It was a pulsing, nagging pain that seemed to both heighten and dull his senses at the same time. The sun was annoyingly bright, so much so that it hurt his head. And then there were the leaves. They rustled too loudly every time the wind blew, leaving his head throbbing.

It was almost like he was having a hangover, but that was impossible, Vilcība didn't get hangovers, or drunk, or anything. He was painfully, boringly immune to everything; immortal and invincible, save for the occasional psychosomatic headaches.

The only thing explanation for a hangover was the loss of his healing. There was only one material in the entire world that could cause that, but this couldn't have been it, it was a foreign feeling. He couldn't dwell for too long on why he had lost his abilities, thinking was making his head pound even more. He needed food and water first, and fast.

In Vilcība's experience, dirt roads always led to settlements. So he walked on, following his most reliable sense, his smell. It may not have been as heightened as it once was, but it worked just the same. He expected to smell food, burning wood or at least the manure villagers still used as fertilisers, but the smell that reached his nose was more rotten and so incredibly familiar.

He had been an experiment, a soldier and then an assassin, so he was far too familiar with the smell of death. It was a nasty combination of festering, decaying meat and excrement; and it was everywhere. The smell was so powerful that it had nestled in the very air he breathed. If he hadn't been around dead bodies all his life, Vilcība would have needed a minute to gag.

Whoever was rotting was very close, he didn't need to follow his nose for long until he got to a sign erected on an extended line in the ground. The line ran in both directions as far as he could see, while the sign seemed to be warning him to stay away from a village called 'Eyam.'

How curious.

The sign appeared handmade and it seemed to aim its warning specifically at travellers. Vilcība surveyed the language used and decided it wasn't threatening enough to indicate impending carnage, so he stepped over the line and continued on past the warning. Even without his abilities, he was certain he could help.

He hadn't walked along the dirt road for very long when he spotted a small stone on the bank of an even smaller body of water. It wasn't until Vilcība was beside it that he realised this was, in fact, a well.

An assortment of round, metallic coins had been left inside a pot of liquid on the stone, coins that gleamed in the sun. He squatted by the stone, the currency may have been foreign to him, but he hadn't exactly been around the entire globe. Besides, it was the smell of the liquid that drew him, the sour, pungent smell—almost like vinegar?

Why would someone soak currency in vinegar?

There were far too many questions and the only means of getting answers was to encounter inhabitants. Humans.

Vilcība walked on, clutching onto the hilt of his sword for comfort, his everlasting companion. He had a gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach that made him wish wherever he was headed had a stupid three-headed monster. He wouldn't be partial to a dragon right now either, anything that needed slaying, a scenario he could control even without his abilities.

By the time he had finally arrived at a location even remotely resembling a community, the smell had gotten unbearable. It wasn't really helping that his headache had decided to use the smell as fuel. He knew where he was now.

This had to be it, the place called Eyam.

The houses in this small community were an amalgamation of bricks, wood and stone. The entire village seemed to have been sliced out of a different time. The roads were wrong, the houses were wrong, and the lack of technology was wrong. There were no wires as far as he could see, no security cameras either.

As he wandered amid the virtually deserted village, he caught several fresh mounds of earth in the backyards of the eerily silent houses. Graves? Perhaps the reason for the smell? It was likely that whoever had buried these people hadn't dug a deep enough grave. Vilcība walked on, he could really only assume at this point. He had no idea how many people were rotting or why.

He was almost at what he inferred was the religious community centre, with its tall, square tower that loomed over the next of the village. His initial assumption was that humans would have gathered here for protection against whatever was killing them, but it seemed just as desolated as the rest of the community.

He walked on, as cautiously as he could until he reached a tall figure. Vilcība had almost drawn his sword at the sight of the long beak.

Almost.

He stopped when he realised the half-foot-long beak was part of some kind of mask. It was the only object with a smell that stood out amongst the rotting meat around them. Every inch of the figure's body was covered. They had donned a garment that reached the ankles and wore long thick boots and gloves, even the head was hidden underneath a wide-brimmed hat.

Vilcība stared at the long mask, he couldn't make the person underneath the mask. He could barely see anything behind the embedded glass the mask had for eyes. He watched the strange figure raise a wooden stick at him and unsheathed his own sword a little.

Something very wrong was happening in this empty village that smelled of death, and if he wasn't extremely careful he would soon be part of the festering death that seemed to envelop Eyam.

(1043 Words)