"Stray Dog, do you still know the way?"
Ash settled in Annan's black hair, streaking it gray. A faint smell of burning hung in the air.
"Where there's light, there are people..." Stray Dog slipped beyond the Light Spell and became a blurred shadow in the distance. He soon returned and pointed left. "There's light over there!"
"Then let's go."
The old Witch Doctor's words surfaced in Annan's mind: "Stay where there's light."
Leaving a line of black footprints in the gray Snowdrifts, they conserved what little Magic Power they had left and headed toward the nearby settlement.
Scattered lights dotted the distance. The town was about the size of Darklamp Town, its lights flickering through the Snowdrifts that fell without end.
They drew closer, but felt no warmth from this town far from the Exile Grounds...
The shapes lying outside its streets filled them with dread. The bodies scattered everywhere only deepened it.
No one in the town was alive.
The stench of blood even overwhelmed the burnt smell of the ash. An eerie glow shone from the empty houses. Because of the ash, the townspeople had grown Glowfruit indoors.
"The same Academy that killed everyone at the Ant Queen Outpost."
Annan said it after examining the wounds on several bodies.
The dead included old people, women, and children, though most were men. Those who deserved to die and those who did not had all fallen silent along with the town.
"They've gone too far..."
Ai murmured what the others were thinking.
They might look down on the people of the Lower Hive and disregard their lives, but they would not go out of their way to slaughter innocents. Now an Academy team had massacred the queen ant's Stronghold, then this town...
Footsteps suddenly came from the darkness.
They