Pink wind rose: "Right behind you..."
Clear skies above and verdant fields below...
... a pastoral idyll that screamed of life and vibrancy, made it all the clearer that their flesh didn't belong in this world.
It was a world designed for warmth, for the blush of blood beneath skin, for the gentle swell of breath in living lungs. They were a stark, discordant note in this symphony of existence.
Though their forms had evolved to resemble humanity -- after centuries of honing their power -- they would fool no one.
Their skin, stretched taut over bone, was still much too pale, the color of aged parchment left too long in the sun.
Their bones, sharp ridges beneath that pallid flesh, still protruded with an unseemly eagerness to escape their fleshy prisons.
Their muscles, though they moved with unnatural strength, still rotten beneath the surface, a secret whispered in the chill air that clung to them.
Blue enso: "We should approach with caution... We're still undead, after all."
Her face twisted in disgust, a fleeting, involuntary rejection of his words, of their shared state.
She knew they were far more than just undead.
Pink wind rose: "I couldn't care less, Xayn. Our purpose is clear, isn't it? Everything else, everyone else... they could never understand. Even if we looked as alive as they did."
Xayn let out a frustrated sigh, the sound like dry leaves skittering across stone.
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Xayn (Blue enso): "Though our purpose is clear, the path leading to it is anything but, Bazren. Like it or not, we will need to cooperate. Establish bridges, mutual points of interest... So, tell me,"
He gestured to their cadaverous forms.
Xayn: " -- how are we supposed to gain anyone's trust looking like two reanimated corpses...?"
A slight smirk touched the corner of her lips, a flicker of amusement in her rose-colored eyes. A quick exhale escaped through her nose.
Bazren (Pink wind rose): "You worry too much -- you'll get your answer soon enough."
As they approached the nearby town, nestled innocently amidst the rolling hills, their unnatural senses were roused.
An illusion, thick and cloying as cheap perfume.
Someone, or something, had cast a veil over the settlement...
... most definitely to conceal what lay within.
Xayn: "Our first contact with humanity and already there's foul play afoot...?"
Bazren squinted, her gaze, sharper than any hawk's, raking across the deceptively peaceful fa?ades of the town's buildings as they cautiously made their way along the silent road. The illusion shimmered at the edges of her vision, a layer of unreality clinging to the air.
Bazren: "Shame we're here, then. Can't fool these eyes... undeath has its perks."
Both Xayn and Bazren's eyes began to glow with an eerie, internal luminescence, amplifying their already unnatural look -- Bazren's irises, shaped like the cardinal points of a wind rose, pulsed with a soft, pink light; Xayn's, each a perfect enso, burned with a steady, cold fire.
Reality, the true reality lurking beneath the shimmering deceit, was unveiled before them in a sickening rush.
Blood, thick and congealed, streaked across the once-dusty dirt road, painting grotesque splatters across the ground.
Dismembered corpses littered the roads, contorted into obscene shapes, limbs akimbo, eyes staring vacantly at the sky. Some decapitated heads, their expressions frozen in silent screams, were even propped up on the splintered remains of wooden fences, like macabre trophies in some monstrous game.
What seemed like a peaceful, ordinary town, a picture of rustic tranquility, was, in truth, a horror show. A hellish tableau vivant, meticulously arranged, and brought about by evil intent so palpable it hung in the air like the stench of death itself.
The question was --
who was behind it?