The party spent two days in the village handling the aftermath, which meant burning everything to the ground. In the end, they chose to remove a section of the blasphemous mural as proof of what they had accomplished.
As for the husks, they were smashed to pieces and burned along with the houses they had once inhabited. No one thought of keeping a souvenir. They didn't need anything to boast of their bravery or display what they had been through. They needed to forget it completely, to turn it into the ashes of a past that could never again appear before them.
Especially the roughly circular zone of destruction that had appeared out of nowhere. Scattered across it were things like the scraps left behind when a kitchen prepared filling—formed from something vaguely familiar, after it had been torn and sliced apart in the chaos.
The journey back went smoothly. Just four days later, they returned to the estate, retrieved their riding horses, and left the forest far behind.
Yet even when they could see the foothills beneath the twin towers of Westminster Castle, most of them still hadn't mentally left that village. They were still treading on its gorgeous, colorful carpet of mushrooms, unable to find even a single patch of ground that felt safe.
People often woke in the middle of the night, flailing their arms to fend off enemies who weren't there, or staring for a long time at anything that still had color in the darkness while on watch.
Strangely enough, they had still completed the task within the allotted time. The entire trip had taken less than two weeks; they had simply spent the time meant for their investigation on other things.
Ever since they had reached the foothills, Martin had kept glancing toward the